Information Communication Technolgy and Tax Administration in Kebbi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Administration of tax laws and policies is the major source through which government around the world raise money to cater for the economic and social wellbeing of the citizenry, the same goes for Nigeria in general and Kebbi State in particular. However, due to the poor tax administration which is as a result of the inability of the Nigeria tax authorities to effectively and efficiently administer tax laws and policies, as such, governments are left with very insignificant tax revenue which undermine their effort in providing economic and social infrastructures to promote the condition of living of the people. The high level of poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructural development, growing public debt and over reliance on statutory allocation from the federation account are all attributed to poor tax administration due to the failure of  tax authorities to collect all approved pubic revenue. Information Communication Technology adoption in taxpayers registration, filling of tax return, tax assessment and tax collection have the potential of improving tax administration and increasing tax revenue. It has been observed that, failure to deploy Information Communication Technology in tax administration has undermined the effort of Kebbi State Board of internal Revenue to collect all approved public revenue there by enabling large number of taxpayers to escape from the tax net, delay in filling of tax return, lead to errors and inaccuracies in tax assessment, which brings about high cost of tax collection, as well as high level of corruption and mismanagement of collected revenue. This research work under study heavily relied on secondary data to investigate the Impact of Information Communication Technology on Tax Administration in Kebbi State. The research recommends the need to put in place policy and legislation that will derive ICT adoption in tax administration in Kebbi State, training of revenue officers on Information Communication Technology related skills, designing, development and deployment of local content software in tax administration by the Kebbi  State Board of Internal Revenue Service.