Federal Government working on a single window for taxation/revenue to be managed by FIRS to be domiciled with CBN
“We are also doing a lot of reform, including the single window because if you look at FIRS, what we collect mainly is company income tax which is the result of the difference between cost of sales and gross sales, But the cost of sales if inflated means you would have less profits and less taxes.
Today, we don’t have anywhere to confirm the major cost of sales of all these companies because when they do the valuation sometimes, they do not have verifiable value to do that. NIMASA as an example, the basis of (revenue) collection for NIMASAA is three percent of FOB. That has nothing to do with marine. If you use the single window, you know the total number of vessels coming into the country and going out and the fee is just three percent. So what does NIMASA need to do about that?. What we are saying is that these agencies were set up to do core duties. When you talk about customs, it is border and trade facilitation. Revenue is not the core mandate of customs. Customs is about border and trade facilitation.
The real principle of the single window is that everything coming to the country is in advance, so you know the number of containers coming, the volume, what is there and you know the amount and they pay you once. When you do that, the customs collecting this and that or the NPA collection would go. If you go to the UK or South Africa, you don’t see customs collecting revenue.”- Zach Adedeji( EC FIRS)
Btw, CBN must begin to act like the true bank of FG. Having different accounts managed by different agencies on behalf of FG is an absurd anomaly.
-All revenues should be accrued into CBN;
-Expenditure should be directly from CBN to Beneficiaries( no third party)