Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has offered a 30-day window to enable taxpayers obtain Tax Clearance Certificate (TCC) with ease.
This followed complaints the agency received from Nigerians on the difficulties they faced in obtaining the TCC.
Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Muhammad Nami said he signed the public notice to make things easy for taxpayers.
The move would enable taxpayers to meet their obligations whenever they need the TCC. Taxpayers need TCC to seek and obtain contracts and loans, renew permits, registration, franchises, agreements and/or licences that will invariably generate revenue from which taxes will be paid.
The FIRS management, Nami said, had looked into the complaints and took steps to ease the process of obtaining the TCC.
The agency chief said it had put in place machinery to issue Year 2020 TCC to all eligible taxpayers from January 2 to January 31.
He warned taxpayers that the agency would invoke the provisions of the law, including its enforcement and imposition, should it become apparent that a taxpayer had misled the FIRS to issue a TCC.
“The service may not hesitate to use enforcement activities, including imposition of lien on bank accounts of such defaulting companies to recover any outstanding debts, when it discovers that the taxpayer has misled the service in its duty to observe tax compliance. The issuance of TCC to ease the burden of taxpayers is in line with the provisions of Section 101 (1) of CITA LFN 2004 and in conformity with Self-Assessment Regulation, 2011,” Nami said. This is the first time the FIRS will grant this window to taxpayers to apply for their TCC, irrespective of their tax compliance status.
It was further reported that a brief had been forwarded to tax controllers on the new development.
This means taxpayers now have a definite window of one month for FIRS to give out TCC to them. Hitherto, FIRS said TCC would be granted by or within two weeks “provided the taxpayer paid all his/her outstanding tax due”.
With this new window for taxpayers, contractors and other members of the public who require TCC can access their contracts, get loans and licences while still having outstanding tax liabilities and pay their remaining tax during the year.
