OGIRS to Begin Electronic Monitoring of Consumption Tax Collection

Femi Ogbonnikan

To enhance the collection of its five per cent consumption tax, Ogun State Internal Revenue Service (OGIRS) has pledged to deploy technology to effectively enforce compliance in its operations.

Addressing journalists in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, at the weekend, the Chairman of the service, Mr. Adekunle Adeosun, disclosed that an era whereby the burden of passing the five per cent consumption on the final consumers are over, just as hotels, bars, even centres, restaurants and others operating within the state would henceforth be electronically monitored to pay on every food and drink consumed.

According to him, “we have consumption tax of 5% in Ogun state which is chargeable on hotels, restaurants, bars and event centres for food and drinks that the public consume on their premises. It is not payable by the establishments, but it is paid by the consumers. So, if you go to these places to have drinks, they are supposed to pay 5% consumption tax on it now. The law was passed in 2012 and we started the implementation in 2016. So, the next process for us now is to have electronic monitoring of those sales for those establishments.

“It will also help those establishments because the sales for those establishments, the people that work there, also under-report them.

We have a lot of institutions which say that they see people coming in and going out, and when they are done, we see bottles of drinks and when they look at the sales that they have, they don’t see anything”.

Instead, Adeosun noted that the OGIRS will come in and collaborate with the hotels, bars, restaurants and event centres, in order to allow for the deployment of electronic monitoring of their sales that will aid to determine what their sales are, and also to allow for block leakages on their own part.

“Although, we also have leakages on the part of the hotels, restaurants and bars. So, it is more of a collaboration that allows us monitoring their sales electronically.

We call it fiscalisation. So, we are working on all that. We will also be doing some other things on Pool and Lottery/ betting establishments to also electronically monitor their sales, because the sales they are reporting for tax purposes are being under-declared.

“So, there are leakages on our part in our dealings with them. There are also leakages from the agents they also employ to operate the establishments for them. As a result, it is a win-win solution for both of us to electronically monitor revenue, sales and taxes”, averred the OGIRS chairman.