THE Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) has become a known phenom-enon in the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for some time now. Everyone in the Service and major stakeholders are aware that the deployment of this system will revolutionise tax administration in Nigeria. In December, 2010, FIRS obtained approval from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to procure, install and implement ITAS. The process has since started with lots of improvement that will sure turn around the tax administration at the federal level, when eventually the system is fully deployed by the end of 2011. The reports of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visits of 2004, 2005 and 2006; strongly recommended that FIRS implement ITAS. Specifically, the 2005 IMF report observed that: “the acquisition of ITAS remains the best way forward for modernizing tax administration in Nigeria. The advantage of ITAS is that the commercially available products have tended to incorporate modern integrated business processes that relate the core tax administration areas into the design of the systems. This allows new tax administration ‘leapfrog’ some of the length system and business process analysis that would otherwise be required to prepare for a new computer processing capability. A major effort needs to be launched to secure funding for ITAS, given the lead for procurement, customization and training required. Acceptance of recom-mendation and actions taken The FIRS accepted the recommendation of the IMF and embarked on a two-phased approach. One phase was to re-engineer and automate its core tax processes, starting with the collection function. This was aimed at curbing leakages that characterized the manual system of collecting taxes through commercial banks. The other phase was to acquire and implement an integrated tax administration software solution and linkage which selected third party agencies whose operations are complimentary to FIRS’ mandate such as the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Nigeria Customers service. Other key drivers and challenges for FIRS include: •Desire for increasing Taxpayer Compliance through simplification of processes and systems for ease of use by the taxpayers and differentiated services to accommodate various types of taxpayers; •Exploiting on current technology evolution to keep pace with technology, minimize disruption and cost to business; •Collaboration with other agencies and stakeholders in order to exchange data and information in a secured and seamless manner; •Creating a business and technology architecture that can support changing business, regulatory and customer needs and; •Providing the right information, at the right time and to the right people. Impact and influence of ITAS implementation When fully implemented, ITAS will engender the adoption of best practices in the Service in the areas of business processes, taxpayer identification and the automation of core tax processes with a comprehensive taxpayer database as an enabler. It will enhance and simplify the administration of taxation; provide requisite support to critical tax administration functions such as returns and payments processing revenue and taxpayers accounting, audit & investigations, tax policy & research, forecasting, etc, in a manner that would otherwise be difficult and/or tedious in a manual system.

ITAS will provide FIRS with required, timely and accurate information on taxpayers, revenue, fraud, etc; support taxpayers in complying with regulations by reducing the admini-strative burden on them and providing easy access to information as and when needed, e.g. tax payer self services; and provide a comprehensive 360 degree view of FIRS’ operations and taxpayers through timely and accurate reporting. Expectedly, it is hoped that ITAS will deliver on the following business coverage: Tax Identification •TIN Generation •Online Registration (self-service) •Online view of registration status •Multiple accounts per TIN •Allow for mergers, sales, etc of Tax payers with configurable rules to handle knock-on effect to liabilities, appeals, etc •Taxpayer creation/registration from external sources •Set/release work flow related flags •Identify & tract relationships between taxpayer entities e.g. director on the board of companies Taxpayer Accounting •Provide the ability to record and automatically apply payments according to defined business rules •Ability to automatically recalculate penalties and interest for any liability or payment adjustment which affects taxpayer balances •Ability to receive and post payments made on 3rd-party applications and websites e.g. Pay Direct/Inter Switch. •Adapted from FIRS Gauge publication (To be continued)