INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY ON TAX ADMINISTRATION (A STUDY OF LAGOS STATE BOARD OF INTERNAL REVENUE)

ABSTRACT

This research study examines the Effect of Information Communication Technology on Tax Administration in Nigeria with reference to Lagos State Board of Internal Revenue it deals with tax administration prospect and process of information communication technology.

Data and information are collected and analysis by means of the survey research design, questionnaire, secondary sources and the chi-square statistical method.

The findings of the research tend to show that effective tax administration leads to an increase in tax base as more potential taxpayers and drawn into the tax net when the atmosphere is conducive.  However, it also found that motivation, and welfare services are important to organizational performance.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

In many ways administrators in the year 2000 are doing exactly what they did in the year 1970.Only the means and medium of doing so have changed.

They still administer revenue laws that trail social and scientific developments by a long margin and are often nightmarish in their complexity. They still devote more than 60% of our resources to processing information received from taxpayers in the form of tax returns. They process the information received relatively inefficiently. The taxpayer provides the data in a paper return, they re-transcribe that information onto our various information systems, and they process that information in batch mode, and that generates further paper that are send to the taxpayer. They still rely on information from our taxpaying clientele which is outdated and often unreliable before we even begin to process it. A significant proportion of our resources provides personal and person-to-person services to our taxpaying client, and still work from centralised offices and locations.

They still support a number of economic and social paradoxes, and rely on increasingly outdated accounting conventions and often-artificial geographical and jurisdictional limitations. Natural resources for example attract no value on the conventional company balance sheet, but most governments are attempting to conserve same. Most income taxes reward expenditure (related to the gaining of income) and discourage frugality and saving. Our tax regimes encourage personal, corporate and national debt, whilst our Treasuries bemoan the lack of national savings and funds.

They encourage the artifice of trans-national corporate entities, and yet fail to associate those entities with actual productive, economic and trading activities in their supposed countries (often tax havens) of domicile.

They are still coming to grips with phenomena like the multi-national corporation, profit shifting, corporate tax minimisation, tax competition and tax havens. And what had previously been the sole purvey of large corporations is now well within the capabilities of small to medium enterprises thanks to computers and the Internet. They allow many entities to hide behind legal and professional privilege, or an easily obfuscated trans-jurisdictional corporate structure. They are, however, slowly coming to grips with these issues.

1.2   STATEMENT OF PROMBLEM

The major compliance problems that face a society are still, broadly speaking, identity, evidence and jurisdiction … although we are coming to grips with these questions in a multitude of different ways.

Though the information technology revolution is redefining our traditional focuses and boundaries it also offers a number of new threats to the revenue that were collected. At present we seem to be applying old business models, forms and methods to the new environment, but this will no doubt change as the system refine their appreciation of electronic commerce, enterprise application integration and real-time automation, and integrate  IT systems better.

In-spite of these, the tax system in Nigeria is crippled with in-efficiency, in policy and personnel, and achieves less effectiveness with high rate of evasion despite myriad of reforms by the government. Thus this research project searches deeply into the causes of the problem and how to revamp an ICT base tax administration in Nigeria as an expedient tax base and sustainable economic development.

1.3     OBEJECTIVE OF STUDY

These include the aim of which this research work is being carried out and it includes the following:

i.      To examine the present state of  tax administration in Lagos

ii.    To determine the degree and area of improvement observed after the introduction of ICT base tax administration.

iii.  To determine if the ICT base tax system is the cause of reduction in tax aviation noticed in Lagos state.

iv.   To know how enumeration of tax personnel affects the ICT base tax administration.

1.4RESEARCH QUESTION

1.Is the degree of improvement observed in Lagos state recent tax generation due to the introduction of ICT base tax administration?

2Is the ICT base tax system in Lagos state the cause of reduction in tax aviation noticed in Lagos state?

3Does enumeration of tax personnel affect the ICT base tax administration?

1.5   RESEARCH HYPOPTHESES

H0:   ICT base tax administration does not have significant effect tax generation.

H1:   ICT base tax administration does have significant effect tax generation.

H0:   ICT base tax system in Lagos state is not the cause of reduction in tax aviation noticed in Lagos state.

H1:   ICT base tax system in Lagos state is the cause of reduction in tax aviation noticed in Lagos state.

H0:   Enumeration of tax personnel does not affect the ICT base tax administration.

H1:  Enumeration of tax personnel does affect the ICT base tax administration?

1.6   SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

Reform of the revenue administration may be needed to enable it to keep up with the increasing sophistication of business activity and tax evasion schemes. With globalization, goods and services are produced by taxable entities in multiple countries. This presents vast opportunities for manipulating transactions to reduce the tax burden. The existence of tax havens, electronic financial transactions and the increasing use of the internet in commerce pose major challenges in enforcing the tax laws. Even, run-of-the-mill domestic taxpayers are increasingly using information technology for running their businesses and for accounting. Without a matching increase in the professional and technological capacity of the revenue administration, its chances of monitoring taxable activity and countering tax evasion are seriously reduced. Thus a study of the effect that ICT base systems have had on tax administration in the study area will give us a better view of its prospect to the nation at large.

1.7   OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS

Back Duty Assessment: - This refers to the review of the underlying record of a taxpayer carried out by the relevant tax authority to confirm whether the returns agree with the records.

Franked Investment Income: - this refers to any interest income or dividend received, net of withholding tax, by a Nigeria Company from another Nigeria Company.

Information: - this refers to any data that has been processed. i.e. processed data.

Communication: - This is a means of conveying information of target users.

Technology: - It is the study (science) of applied to practical purposes technically means and skills of a particular civilization.

Administration: - (SAFE, 1991) covers all the processes, which begin with bringing to the knowledge of the tax payer his duty and nature of tax to pay and end with the procurement of a tax clearance certificate of discharge certificate.