Taxpayers near 45 million as database integration nears completion

Nigerian taxpayer roll will soon hit 45 million, going by the efforts of the Joint Tax Board led by its Chairman, Tunde Fowler.
Fowler who is also the Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, has fostered an uncommon collaboration between the States Internal Revenue Services, SIRSs and the FIRS resulting in several collaborative projects in the last five years.
The ongoing integration of databases will fetch the nation a total of 45 million individual and corporate taxpayers, Executive Secretary, Joint Tax Board, (JTB), Oseni Elamah said in Abuja Monday.
Elamah said this on Monday when he presented a report on the new Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) Registration System to the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Tunde Fowler, in Abuja.
Elamah also said that the JTB has completed the building of a new TIN Registration System which is an integration of TIN numbers of various organisations in Nigeria, adding that the growth of the taxpayers’ database is a major flank of the goals of the JTB in collaboration with the apex tax authority, the FIRS.
“When the integration of the new TIN Registration System is launched, it will afford prospective taxpayers the opportunity to register for tax from the comfort of their homes and print their registration certificate” Fowler said.
Fowler expressed happiness over the completion ofthe new TIN Registration System and said that the system would encourage transparency, efficiency and convenience in tax administration in Nigeria.
“I congratulate the JTB for finalising the new TIN Registration System in record time. We now have a consolidated database for all taxpayers in Nigeria. If you (a taxpayer) go to any other country or visit another state in Nigeria and they want to check your tax status, what this means is that they can check your tax status by a touch of a button. We want to assure all taxpayers that we are ready to serve them more with technology, convenience and accountability”, said Fowler.
On the benefits of the new TIN Registration system, Elamah said:
“State Revenue Authorities are expected to enjoy immense benefits from the new TIN System. Among this are: Taxpayer Information Accessibility and Accuracy: the registration and recording of taxpayer information is one of the fundamental functions of tax administration and to a great extent, this will drive how other core administrative functions operate.
“ The timely and accurate collection and recording of basic identifying information of the taxpayer will permit the tax administrator to understand its taxpayer base, staff itself accordingly and to effectively plan other core administration functions. The existence of an accurate taxpayer database will inevitably lead to effective compliance programmes observation.
“The redesigned, development and deployment of a TIN system leverages on existing taxpayer data available from databases of multiple organisations like CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission, banks through BVN (Banks Verification Number), Identity Card Management Commission and other.
“It is a web-based solution with centralised management of all the various functions of the TIN registration system offering and accessible to authorised users of the system for reviews and approvals of registration requests, TIN certificate issuance and integration with relevant stakeholders.
“It makes possible integration and exchange of data with sister state Boards of Internal Revenue, FIRS and other third party organisations through web services”, Elamah said.