Nigeria: Lagos State automates tax processes, enhances payment channels and monitoring Systems

The Office of the Special Adviser, Taxation and Revenue (SA T&R) of the Lagos State government is facilitating an end-to-end process automation among revenue-generating MDAs to facilitate additional payment channels, monitoring systems up and down time and self-service solutions.

This according to LASG is aimed at widening the tax net and ease payments for taxpayers.

The approach entails:

1. Engagement with revenue-generating Ministry Department & Agencies (MDA)

2. External Stakeholders Engagement

3. Process review and optimization

4. Upgrade of Lagos State Revenue Management Platform: Due for launch in Q2 by Mr. Governor, will improve taxpayers experience in the State through self-service, on-boarding of additional payment gateways and multiple payment channels.

5. Adoption of unique payer ID: This initiative is structured to validate the identification of taxpayers by linking payer’s identity to LagID, NIN, Phone Number, BVN, Driver’s License, and International Passport. The state will ultimately achieve a centralized payer’s database and 360-degree view of all payers across all MDAs.

6. Enforcement and Monitoring: they embarked on an enforcement drive to improve compliance through enforcement by deliberately promoting the tax evidence as a prerequisite to accessing services.

7. Amnesty programs:to provide a window forpayers with long-outstanding balances either LUC, Building permits and others to clear them and close disputes.

8. Proactive Service Monitoring System: To continuously monitor the health of all payment service platforms and alert technical team of any potential issues or service downtime before it impacts the end users.