FG Clears N33.13bn PAYE Liabilities
The Federal Inland Revenue Service has said that the Federal Government has cleared N33.13bn outstanding PAYE tax liabilities owed by Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies to states from 2002 to 2016, in the South-West region.
The chairman, Joint Tax Board, Mr Babatunde Fowler, disclosed this on Thursday when he inaugurated the new National Taxpayer Identification Number registration system in the South-West geopolitical zone.
He said the TIN registration system and Consolidated National Taxpayers Database introduced by the JTB would improve the efficiency and output of the entire tax administration process and provide convenience to taxpayers and tax authorities.
According to the JTB chairman, the new system will ensure that the taxpayer’s information is available whenever and wherever it is needed.
Fowler said the system possessed the capability to integrate with relevant agencies and leverage already captured data, deploy analytics to discover underlying and correlating trends and patterns that could lead to increased Internally Generated Revenue for all tiers of government.
These agencies, he added, included the Corporate Affairs Commission, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Federal Road Safety Corps, Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, Nigeria Identity Management Commission and Nigerian Communications Commission.
He said, “This will significantly reduce the burden of manual taxpayer information management and by extension grossly crash the cost of collection.
“The system is designed in such a manner that each taxpayer is assigned a unique and universal Taxpayer Identification Number and it is now possible for any taxpayer to view, retrieve or update their tax profile from anywhere 24/7.”
According to him, the new TIN registration system and its consolidated database of individual and corporate taxpayers’ have been designed to form the foundation upon which the nation’s automated tax administration system was built.
The JTB boss mentioned some of its recent milestones to include, “The payment by the Federal Government of all outstanding PAYE tax liabilities owed by Federal MDAs to states from 2002 to 2016, totalling N135.8bn; with a total of N33.13bn paid to the states in the South-West geopolitical zone.”
In his opening remarks at the event, the Executive Secretary, JTB, Oseni Elamah, said the new system was a web-based solution that offered access to authorised users to initiate TIN request from the comfort of their homes/offices real-time online, verify their tax status and print their TIN certificate.
“It is a transparent system that assures timely and accurate collection and recording of basic identification data,” he said
Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-olu, commended the JTB for initiating the new system, which he said would take tax administration to the next level.
