Nigeria Content Online

The challenges of
multiple taxation and the need to improve the revenue of states to
enable them cope with the new minimum wage takes centre stage at the
123rd Joint Tax Board meeting holding in Yola.

The chairman of the
board, Ifueko Omogui Okauro, called for renewed efforts on the part of
tax administrators in the implementation of decisions made at the
meeting. She said the administrators failed to implement the policies
in the past, stressing that the development was responsible for
multiple taxation due to the different approaches to the same kind of
tax matters among member states.

Mrs Omogui-Okauro
said the phenomenon of multiple taxation is not only an “issue of major
concern” but that the “phenomenon has caused a lot of embarrassment to
our country as international communities, agencies and investors have
continued to draw our attention to the harmful effect and impact of
multiple taxation”.

Mrs Omogui-Okauro
who said the meeting with the theme “Imperative of Automation in tax
administration” has become necessary in view of the need to direct the
country’s tax system towards achieving tax payments and collections
that would be real time based.

She, however, said
reduction of multiple taxation would not be possible “without
modernizing the tax operations and infrastructural components which
hugely is obtainable through automation.”

It is expected that
the contract agreement between the joint tax board with the Telnet
consortium the service providers for the unique taxpayer identification
number (UTIN) project which is seen by the tax administrators as a
necessary step towards providing a comprehensive taxpayer database for
all the tax authorities in the country under the joint tax board would
be signed during the session.

The UTIN whose
major objectives among others includes providing comprehensive taxpayer
database has a tremendous role to play in the modernization process of
Nigerian Tax system, Mrs Omogui-okauro said.

At the meeting, the
Adamawa State government said it has recorded tremendous improvement in
the state internally generated revenue.

The state’s
governor, Murtala Nyako said the meeting of the joint, tax board was at
an auspicious time when all the various states of the federation are
doing everything possible to reform the country’s tax system with a
view to increasing internally generated revenue and thus reduce the
burden of taxation on individual citizens.

The governor
represented by his deputy Bala James Ngillari said “the government in
order to ensure prompts returns and accountability of revenue
collection from government agencies has approved the centralization of
revenue collectors.

Similarly, approval has been given for the merger of vehicle
Inspection officers (VIO) to the board of internal revenue for harmony
in road taxes administration.