The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) generates about N3 billion from stamp duty weekly. The Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Muhammad Nami, disclosed this at a meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, in Abuja, yesterday.
\nAccording to him, the feat was achieved as a result of the deployment of a new Application Programming Interface (API) technology solution, an \u2013 online real-time technology that makes the collection of Stamp Duties easier.
\nThe FIRS boss said that there was only N30 billion in the NIPOST Stamp Duty Account with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), when he assumed office in December 2019. That account was opened in 2016, according to him.
\nNami disclosed, however, that by April 2020, the balance in the account had grown to N58 billion because of the deployment of the API by the FIRS.
\nHe stressed the collection of Stamp Duties in the country had been on in the last 94 years and had always been the responsibility of tax agencies.
\nNami regretted that the differences in who controls stamp duty collection between both NIPOST and FIRS had degenerated into a media affair, adding,
\n\u201cThe FIRS regrets that as an agency of the government, FIRS and NIPOST allow a simple situation to degenerate to media exposure.\u201d
\nThe meeting, which was chaired by the Chairman Hon James Faleke was called to resolve the face-off between the FIRS and the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) over stamp duty collection.
\nThe Postmaster-General of NIPOST, Dr Ismail Adewusi, agreed with Nami that the disagreement between FIRS and NIPOST over Stamp Duty collection was unnecessary.
\nHe said: \u201cNIPOST is not a tax collecting agency. We are not in the business of collecting taxes, that\u2019s not our mandate. But our role in stamp duty is clearly stated in the law.
\n\u201cThe issue is, the Finance Act, 2019 did not in any way stop NIPOST from its mandate. In spite of the amendment to Finance Act, it has not affected the responsibility of NIPOST. There is no fight between NIPOST and FIRS over tax collection,\u201d he said.
\nHe, however, insisted that the responsibility of procuring stamp rested with NIPOST and said that, the agency was entitled to its share of the stamp duty proceeds it collected and domiciled in the CBN from 2016 to 2020.
\nAccording to him, \u201cAll the monies that accrued to the account include proceeds of stamp sales. In the spirit of peace, we want FIRS to look at the issue. We deserve in sharing the cost of collection. At the initial meeting, FIRS said they will give us 30 per cent and take 70 per cent, we said no.\u201d
\nHon Faleke said his committee would examine the Acts in reference before taking a decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) generates about N3 billion from stamp duty weekly. The Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Muhammad Nami, disclosed this at a meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, in Abuja, yesterday. According to him, the feat was achieved as a result of the deployment of a new Application […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223483,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-239218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/223483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}