Yesterday, we had our Tax Breakfast Seminar which focused on the budget and the Finance Act. In attendance was the Executive Chairman of the FIRS. I will share with you in few tweets some of the insights provided by the FIRS Chairman.
It's a thread !
It's a thread !
The FIRS will deploy more of it's workforce to tax audit. Currently only 16% of the FIRS headcount handle tax audits. This will be scaled up to 30% of the headcount.
The FIRS is collaborating with tax authorities at the state level and there is going to be increase in the level of information sharing among the tax authorities.
The FIRS is collaborating with other agencies of government such as EFCC, NFIU, ICPC etc. The focus is to ensure companies do not evade tax.
There is going to be increase in the use of technology. For instance the FIRS will revert to the use of ITAS for tax filings.
FIRS will strive to ensure all taxpayers are captured on the ITAS platform.
The Finance Act 2019, will take effect in the 2020 year of assessment i.e. the new tax rules will be applied to the 2019 financial statements for the calculation of CIT. For VAT, the commencement date is 1 February 2020 as earlier announced.
The FIRS will issue Information Circulars to clarify grey areas as to the implementation of the Finance Act 2019.
On the issue of administrative structure of the FIRS, the FIRS Chairman confirmed that the Service now operates a decentralized structure with Tax Controllers having powers to deal with tax matters within their coverage area.
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