At a forum organised yesterday by BusinessDay in partnership
with the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), stakeholders suggested strategies that
could help government rev up income through taxes, especially in the
face of the present lean oil revenue.
Samuel Ogungbesan, immediate past acting FIRS chairman, suggested
that the first step would be to populate a central tax database that
would provide adequate information on those eligible to pay taxes, as
obtainable in France with over 32 million tax payers and South Africa.
He said there was need to further push for an efficient tax revenue
collection process, but that this would only happen if the entire tax
system was computerised in order to check the present trend of running
after taxpayers.
There is also the need for other stakeholders to challenge the tax
system, he said, as he bemoaned the discord between policy makers and
regulators, and kicked against the resolution of the National Assembly
on the enactment of the FCT Board of Internal Revenue despite informed
counsel by the office of the erstwhile minister of finance, Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala.
