By: Muhammad Sabiu, Kaduna
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has raked in higher tax revenue since 2019 culminating in the collection of N10.5 trillion in the 2022 tax year.
This was disclosed in a statement by Osigbesan Sultan Luqman when the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and Afropolitan Media Limited held a capacity training for working journalists in Kaduna on Tuesday.
According to the statement, the training programme for journalists was initiated in order to bring journalists abreast of developments in the Nigerian Tax System under the administration of the Service’s Executive Chairman, Mr. Muhammad Nami, so that the media can inform the general public from a position of knowledge of the sector.
The statement noted also that the workshop was designed to sensitise the media on new challenges posed by fresh developments to tax organizations in the country and worldwide such as e-commerce.
“The training therefore, was conceived in order to deepen knowledge of the Nigerian tax administration among journalists so that they can report the sector better to the understanding and benefit of taxpayers in Nigeria.
In her welcome address, at the one-day event, Chief Executive Officer, Afropolitan Media Limited, Hajiya Aisha Umar Halilu, informed the gathering that “the workshop aims to bring participants up to date on current challenges faced by tax authorities like the FIRS and the importance of the media reporting these challenges ethically and responsibly in close collaboration with the FIRS and other tax bodies at the sub-national levels and for the education of the taxpaying public.
She commended the FIRS under the Nami Administration for supporting the capacity-building training programme for media professionals in the country and urged the journalists to make use of the knowledge gained at the workshop to sensitise the public better on their legal responsibility to pay tax.
During the training, the resource person Ibraheem Ajibola delivered the module on a “General Overview of the Nigerian Tax Ecosystem”. He defined tax as “any compulsory payment to government imposed by law without direct benefit or return of value or a service whether it is called a tax or not”
Ajibola expanded his treatise on the Nigerian Tax System with a detailed treatment of sub-topics covering the various tax authorities in the country, at the apex of which stands the FIRS; tax types and the Relevant Tax Authority (RTA) that can demand them among the FIRS, State Board of Internal Revenues and Local Government Revenue Committees; and common terms and acronyms used in taxation in Nigeria.
The second session was as highly illuminative as the first as Ajibola taught the modules “FIRS: Roles, Responsibilities and Administration” and “Reforms and Innovations in the FIRS: TaxPromax, Finance Acts, SENTINAL”.
The course content saw Ajibola lectured participants on how the FIRS functions administratively in the tax ecosystem in Nigeria and abroad as well as the reforms which the Nami Administration had carried out to make tax payment easier for Nigerians, including the benefits these had brought to the taxpayer and Nigeria.
The Nami reforms, Ajibola added, has led to Nigeria moving into double digit collection figures in the trillion naira mark as the FIRS under Nami increasingly raked in higher tax revenue since 2019, culminating in the collection of N10.5 trillion in 2022 tax year.
Ajibola attributed the FIRS success to Nami’s administrative ingenuity in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use in the tax collection, particularly the construction of the Taxpromax platform developed by FIRS staff, which was launched on June 7, 2021.
The chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) correspondents chapel, Abdulgafar Alabelewe who led the Journalists thanked the organisers for the training, saying, it has broaden the scope of the media practitioners on tax matters in the country.
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