Role of e-Governance in Nigeria’s tax System: Strategy Perspective to Enhancing Compliance
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Nigeria like most other African countries is facing a lot of challenges in terms dwindling revenue base. Currently,
Nigeria derives about 90 percent of her revenue from oil proceeds. However, considering the sharp drop in the price of crude
oil in the international market, there is an urgent need for the government to expand its tax net in order to capture entities
that hitherto not filing their tax returns whether deliberately or as a result of bottlenecks. Some of the government agencies
have adopted the e-governance platform by means of e-payment to encourage citizens to pay their taxes and to eradicate
tensions generated in payment process. However, whether this initiative has led to an increase in tax returns or not is subject
to empirical review. This study therefore examined the reactions of tax payers to the e-payment system, the challenges it
has posed and to find out if there is any provision for taxpayers to make input into the tax system in the country with a view
to improving on the revenue base of the government through enhanced tax collection system, particularly in the area of
suggestions from the citizens. To achieve these objectives, the study analyzed the primary and secondary data obtained from
the websites of the Inland Revenue Service at both the federal and state levels of the Nigerian federation and from
respondents through the administration of questionnaire to see how the citizens are encouraged or not to pay their taxes
and the extent to which the government at the different levels have benefited from the e-payment initiative compared to
the usual face to face manual tax collection system that has been in existence before now. Therefore, using data gathered
from relevant agencies within and outside Nigeria, this study focused on examining issues of promoting awareness of the tax
e-filling platform to tax payers, propose policy contents that could instigate compliance to tax systems, and identify strategic
areas that enhance the role of e-governance on tax compliance. Recommendations were made about the effective
implementation of e-governance and tax compliance in Nigeria.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), HF5601 Accounting