*FIRS generate N3bn weekly from stamp duties – Nami
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has been generating N3billion revenue weekly from stamp duty collections, FIRS Executive Chairman, Muhammad Nami stated this Tuesday at a meeting with House of Representatives Committee on Finance.
The stamp duty revenue is generated from May 2020 to date from Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Nami disclosed
The meeting with the legislators was to resolve the face-off between the FIRS and the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) over stamp duty collections, and the fate of the N58 billion revenue generated from February 2016 to April, 2020.
Nami said FIRS was able to generate this much revenue from a single stream of stamp duty collection from DMBs because the Service had deployed a new technology to track and capture such revenue straight into the federation account.
The technology deployed by the FIRS, Nami said, is the Application Programming Interface (API) technology solution, an – online real time technology that makes collection of stamp duties easier.
Nami said when he assumed office in December 2019, the FIRS discovered over N30 billion in the NIPOST stamp duty account with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The account was opened in 2016 specifically to warehouse revenue from stamp duty collections.
However, by April 2020, the balance in the account had grown to N58 billion because of the deployment of the API by the FIRS. Money in the stamp duty account by May 2020 was transferred to the federation account following instructions given to the CBN by the FIRS to do so.
Since then, both the FIRS and the NIPOST have been at daggers drawn over who controls stamp duty collections and invariably the money which accrues from the collection.
Nami said payment of stamp duty collections in Nigeria dates back 94 years ago, stressing that stamp duty had always been part of the revenue schedule of tax authority.
He regretted that the differences in who controls stamp duty collections between NIPOST and FIRS had degenerated to a public spat between the two agencies, describing the development as “unnecessary and unhelpful”.
According to him, “the FIRS regrets that as agency of the government, FIRS and NIPOST allow a simple situation to degenerate to media exposure”.
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