By Ademola Alawiye

Thursday, 23 Dec 2010

The Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mrs. Ifueko Omoigui-Okaru, has said that the nation‘s overall tax revenue has risen to N2.2tn within a period of 14 years.

She said, in a lecture delivered on “the role of taxation in achieving the vision 20-2020 objectives,” in Lagos, that the tax revenue rose by 1,975 per cent from N106bn in 1996 to N2.2tn in 2009.

She said, “Government has put in significant effort, especially in the last decade, towards ensuring that taxation plays a proper role in achieving government‘s developmental goals. This had led to major reforms in our tax system spread out across processes, people, systems and policy. These reforms have led to, amongst other positive developments in the tax system, growth in overall tax revenues from about N106bn in 1996 to N2.9tn in 2008 and N2.2 tn in 2009.”

The FIRS boss expressed conviction that reforms in the past five years could serve as a reference point for pushing through the reforms needed in other areas of economic life towards achieving set goals.

She said, ”When the reforms commenced, the tax system, as it was then, was unable to live up to its potential. We had a manual, largely unresponsive tax system in place. Tax payers’ confidence was low; morale within the tax administration was also low; there were complaints of poor working conditions, low remuneration, no motivation, lack of adequate and appropriate working tools and consequently low tax yield.”

Omoigui-Okaru noted that the significant growth in tax revenue had been helped largely by system automation, involving core tax processes such as registration and identification of tax payers.

”Also in place is an electronic payment and reporting system for tax collection that has largely reduced leakages of tax revenue, creating greater transparency and accountability in the system, and leading to greater taxpayer confidence,” she added.

To attain the Vision 20 2020 goal, she stressed that the polity must be peaceful, harmonious and stable.

She said this was aside from the assumption that the macro-economy would be sound, stable and globally competitive with a Gross Domestic Product of not less than $900bn and a per capita income of not less than $4,000 per annum.

She said, ”There must also be adequate infrastructure that supports the full mobilisation of all economic sectors; in addition to modern and vibrant education system that provides every Nigerian the opportunity and facility to achieve his maximum potential, providing adequate and competent manpower.”

Source: Punch