Ahead of the March 30 deadline for Personal Income Tax (PIT) returns, Taxaide, a leading tax management and technology firm, has unveiled technological tools aimed at enhancing a more effective tax administration for Nigerians and tax authorities.
Speaking with journalists at a media parley on Tuesday, Bidemi Olumide, CEO of Taxaide, said the firm, through its technology development subsidiary, Taxtech, produced PITApp® to serve as an aggregator of all PIT obligations and urged all taxable Nigerians to ensure that they meet their PIT obligations before the deadline.
“The 2020 PIT filing season is upon Nigerians and the law requires every taxable person to file their tax returns with the designated revenue agency of the state where they are resident in Nigeria,” he said. “The deadline for doing this in the leap year 2020 is March 30 and, as part of our work in building a more effective tax management system, we have built the PITApp to simplify the PIT returns filing and remittance process for Nigeria tax residents.”
PIT returns are currently fileable with the designated revenue agency of each of the 36 States in Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The failure by a taxable person to file his or her PIT returns is a punishable offence with fines, and imprisonment where the fines are not paid.
Chief Technology Officer of Taxtech, Onatoye Onakomaiya, said PITApp is both a web-based and mobile application service available at www.pitapp.taxit.com.ng and on TBook® (iOS and Google Play Store), the firm’s flagship mobile application. “The app is designed to make life easier for Nigerian taxpayers; especially in an increasingly technologically-driven world,” he said. “PITApp saves you time and money by reducing resources that would have been spent on undertaking these tasks manually.”
According to Mr. Olumide, there are an estimated 900 revenue collecting agencies Federal, State and Local) in the country jostling for the attention of Nigerian taxpayers. “This is a huge distraction from the core economic activities that should generate the tax in the first place,” he said. “Every taxable person or organisation should focus on its core commercial mandate while leaving the operational aspects of their tax compliance to accredited tax managers. This is the essence of Taxaide; to take care of those distractions. From tax audits management, to payroll management, to PIT management, to corporate income taxes management, to the management of transaction taxes as Value Added Tax, Withholding Tax, etc.”
Also introduces iDAP
March 15, 2020 is the deadline for organisations that are Personal Data Controllers or Administrators to file their Annual Data Protection Audit Reports with Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
According to the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR), which NITDA released on 25 January 2019, the failure to file could attract pecuniary sanctions of up to 2% of the global turnover of the errant organisation or N10 million, whichever is higher. Since the release of the NDPR, a significant number of Personal Data Controllers or Administrators have seen reasons to be compliant with the NDPR and avoid the wrath of NITDA.
For the purposes of the NDPR, a Personal Data Controller or Administrator is an organisation that processes the Personal Data of at least 1000 Data Subjects. A Data Subject is both of: (i) a Nigerian, regardless of where he or she lives; and (ii) any person that lives in Nigeria, regardless of where the Personal Data processing activity is to take place.
Taxtech, one of the 27 Data Protection Compliance Organisations (DPCO) appointed by NITDA to assist with ensuring that Personal Data Controllers or Administrators are compliant with the NDPR, in September 2019 started the conversation on a process for the automation of the filing of Data Protection Audit Reports.
“Without automation, it will be almost impossible for Nigeria’s 27 DPCOs to assist the estimated 5 million Data Controllers or Administrators, ensure compliance with the NDPR in 2020,” said Mr. Olumide. “Nigeria’s ability to see that more organisations than not are compliant with the NDPR is an unspoken prerequisite for Nigeria to be adjudged a data protection compliant country.
And that is why we built an electronic Data Protection Audit Platform (iDAP) to ease the data protection audit process for DPCOs. iDAP is an application that allows DPCOs carry out the entire audit process of their clients (Data Controllers and Administrators) seamlessly. Where NITDA allows, the DPCOs can also automatedly file the audit reports with NITDA, thereby giving NITDA the opportunity of standardising, assessing and further simplifying the compliance process.”
Oyeyemi Oke, Taxtech’s Executive Director, Data Protection Compliance Services, said iDAP can currently be accessed online on www.ndpr.ng, www.idap.taxit.com.ng or www.ndpr.nitda.gov.ng. “Our recent experiences as the DPCO that has arguably undertaken the most data protection audits has shown that good automation largely helps in both work accuracy and turnaround time, thereby significantly lowering compliance costs for Data Controllers and Administrators,” he said. “Without solutions like iDAP, it would be nearly impossible for 27 DPCOs to serve the estimated population of Data Controllers and Administrators. Even 1000 DPCOs would still have an uphill task in meeting the targets.”
Part of the mandate of DPCOs is to provide training on data protection compliance. To ensure this, Taxtech has through the NDPR Academy, a joint venture learning institution established for the purpose of training and certifying data protection practitioners for Nigeria, run foundations and cybersecurity programmes aimed at sensitising stakeholders. “Our Q1 2020 Master Course is scheduled to hold on the 4th and 5th of March 2020,” said Olugbenga Sile, Taxtech’s Head of Operations and Registrar of the NDPR Academy
