Online purchase tax may begin In January – Fowler
Adewusi Yinka
The Executive Chairman of Federal inland Revenue Service ( FIRS), Mr Babatunde Fowler said beginning from January 2020 , Nigerians may start paying tax on every product purchased online and delivered to their respective homes, Mr Fowler dropped this hint yesterday in Abuja at the annual meeting of the Nigerian Tax Research Network. He told journalists that a lot of products purchased online and delivered to homes across the country were not taxed. According to him “I am sure that when you order things online, you don’t often pay any VAT and this has two negative effects.
“The number one is that the shop owner who pays rents, who has a staff, is at a disadvantage and if care is not taken, everybody will start ordering online and it will be delivered at their houses without any tax payment.
“We are going to try and address that by January of 2020.”
Speaking further , Fowler said many products purchased online were not taxed on the global level “On the international level, we have what we call significant presence and basically what happens now with digital products is that, I’ll use an example of software.
“You get software from any country outside Nigeria and when it comes to a time to update or to even repair (the software), it can be done remotely from the country of origin and you make payment without any tax.”
Speaking on the allegation of illegal revenue reductions by the agency , Fowler said that tthe service would need explanation from the Auditor-General for the Federation, Anthony Ayine.
A report from the office of Auditor General of the federation had stated that the agency (FIRS) generated N2.66tn but paid about N2.45tn into Federation Account, which implied that the service deducted and failed to remit N210bn. According to Fowler FIRS remitted all revenue it collected during the period to the Federation Accoun
, “I don’t know where he (Ayine) got that information from, because all the revenue that we generate goes to the Federation Account. We collect our monthly revenue during FAAC.” He said