The Federal Inland Revenue Service has engaged stakeholders as it began the phased rollout of its national electronic invoicing solution to modernise fiscal and transactional processes in Nigeria.
The engagement which held on Tuesday, at Four Point by Sharaton, Victoria Island, Lagos, was conducted with stakeholders from various sectors of the economy.
According to the agency, the implementation of the pilot phase which kicked off with large taxpayers who make millions of transactions daily or weekly, is aimed at improving the country’s tax administration and compliance through real-time visibility into business transaction and financial data.
Tayo Koleoso, the chief of staff of FIRS boss Zacch Adedeji, told journalists that customers were already keying into the initiative and the feedback has been encouraging.
Mr Koleoso said, “We have a couple of the large taxed customers like MTN, Huawei, and the oil and gas companies who are already engaging with us. This integration will last within the next six months.
“So, it’s a journey we’re doing deliberately in making sure that we have all the stakeholders carried along and consulted, so that all their feedbacks can be integrated into this system, to truly have a unified solution that caters to all the requirements that we’re looking to solve with this.”
Stating that the implementation of the initiative will provide customers with “more data for their businesses and make intelligent decisions for their businesses and even for the country to make both fiscal and monetary policy decisions.”
Mr Koleoso explained that companies had started to do the integration, aligning their business process and on boarding this technology into their system.
“We’re encouraged by it and more people are getting ready to start,” he stated.
Loveth Onanuga, FIRS’ director of taxpayers services,, said the e-invoicing would reduce errors or incorrect reporting by taxpayers.
“We’re doing our pilot with our largest tax payers because they have the largest ERP systems and transactions,” Ms Onanuga stated. “We want to capture them first and make sure that we get it right before we move down to our medium tax payers and the small tax payers.”
According to her, all taxpayers signed up to the system will be able to report real-time transactions, giving FIRS visibility on all transactions as they happen either online or offline.
This way, she noted, there would be “no controversy anymore between the taxpayers and the tax administration on how much taxes are due.”
The implementation of the initiative aligns with the Tax Administration and Enforcement Act of 2007.
An electronic invoice is a machine-readable document exchanged between a buyer and a supplier in a structured data format which can be automatically and electronically processed, while they remain digital throughout their lifecycle.
The technology adopted the BIS Billing 3.0 UBL standard to enable seamless exchange of e-invoices across platforms, while also streamlining business operations and tax compliance nationwide.
