WML, FIRS Launch VAT Automation System for Hospitality Industry

A corporate technology provider, West Metro Limited (WML), has initiated an auto-tracking system to accelerate Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, monitoring of Value Added Tax VAT in the hospitality sector.

The auto-remittance technology has been designed to automatically track VAT from various points of transaction in the hospitality sector all the way to final payment with as little human intervention as possible.

Soji Abolarin, Executive Director, WML, who spoke at a stakeholder round table in Lagos said the initiative was targeted at actualising the revenue collection goals of the service and plug leakages using improvised technology.

He explained that it will primarily perform automatic reporting of VAT at transaction source using the principles of fiscalisation and automatic remittance to the federation account (VAT Auto Deduct).

According to him, hospitality operators and regulatory bodies will expend less energy on manual records management as the electronic system would make necessary communication with the FIRS on their behalf.

Giving an analogy of the process flow, Abolarin said: “Merchant enrols on ATRS platform with Tax Identification Number (TIN), corporate email address and CAC Number. Once enrolled, Merchants billing systems are enabled to provide Unique Identifier Codes for each transaction as well as Security Identifiers as confirmation from the FIRS.

On the part of the government, the technology expert said benefits including efficiency of revenue collection of all tax registered entities, monitoring of all states internally generated revenue, reduction of overhead/administration cost and statistical Information gathering policy formulation and identification of trends among others. He added that tax payment experience would also assume a new dimension with ease of payment, systemic compliance with transparency and regular notification of tax schedules.