VAIDS collates tax data of over 5 million individuals, organisations

The data of over five million corporate organisations and individuals in the country have been collected through the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme, VAIDS.

The data collated will be subjected to further analysis to ensure that all unpaid taxes are tracked and collected. This was contained in a statement issued by the VAIDS Office in the Federal Ministry of Finance on Wednesday.

The statement also added that the second phase of its data mining initiative was aimed at obtaining data from all government revenue-generating agencies.

The agencies, the office said, include the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS; Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC; Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN; Federal Housing Authority, FHA; Petroleum Technology Development Fund, PTDF and the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC.

According to the VAIDS office, data harvested from these agencies, would be used to determine the companies that had not remitted taxes based on income earned.

It would also be used to identify those that had under-declared as well as government agencies and corporate organisations that had collected taxes on behalf of the government but failed to remit same.

The VAIDS office said that analyses of the data would lead to considerable recovery of lost revenues and provide a rich data capture of eligible taxpayers.

The VAIDS office obtained data on all contracts and transactions above N50 million from the Nigeria Customs Service, Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria and the Nigeria Export-Import Bank.

It was learnt that data collected are being matched with those that will be provided by the FIRS, Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC and the Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System to identify tax – defaulting companies.

Earlier, the governments of Lagos, Osun and Kaduna states as well as the Federal Capital Territory Administration had volunteered to provide all transaction data required to identify tax defaulters at the expiry of the first phase of the tax amnesty programme on March 31, 2018.

The statement explained that states that provide the required information were expected to record a boost in their Internally Generated Revenue, IGR.