Professional bodies in tax management are putting heads together to fashion out the implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on standardisation of tax practice in Nigeria.
The meeting, being hosted by the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Muhammad Nami has in attendance, representatives from the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), and the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN).
Addressing the meeting today, July 7, the FIRS boss called for value-based leadership approach from the councils even as he advised the professional bodies to work hand-in-hand with the Service to deepen the FIRS institutional framework through qualitative reporting and effective representation of their clients.
“Our professional bodies need to speak on matters of tax policies and tax laws especially on proposals to annual Finance Bills.
“We also urge you to help the Service to deepen institutional framework through quality reporting and effective representation of clients by our professional colleagues.
“We need to stem the tides in improving financial reporting to reduce the spate of ‘copy and paste’ financial reporting system as we experience today.”
Nami, who is also a Fellow of two of the three professional bodies, said that FIRS has adopted renewed strategies to tackle financial reporting concerns.
According to him, FIRS has created new departments such as the Intelligence, Strategic Data Mining and Analysis Department, the Special Crimes Department, the Tax Incentives Management Department and the Emerging and Special Taxes Department, which he stated are at the forefront of unravelling financial reporting issues through data mining.
He said that the FIRS alongside the State Inland Revenue Services, are collaborating with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to build a databank to improve tax investigation.
Other strategies include the accreditation of tax consultants and auditors in the FIRS, the review of data from Automatic Exchange of Information as well as increased enforcement actions.
The Presidents of the three bodies, Professor Benjamin Osisioma of ANAN, Tijjani Musa Isa of ICAN and Adesina Adedayo of the CITN commended the FIRS Executive Chairman for showing leadership in pushing for and enabling a resolution of the squabbles between the three bodies.
This was even as Professor Osisioma commended the efforts of Nami, saying that failure to cooperate amongst the three bodies would lead to chaos in tax practice regulation in the country.
“If we fail to cooperate and collaborate, we would destroy what we are trying to build.”
