…Restates commitment to stop leakages
As part of measures to block leakages and ensure accountability, authorities of the Ekiti State Revenue Service have called on financial institutions and payment gateways to adopt the newly introduced digital platform known as Central Billing System.
This is the focus of a programme tagged “CBS/SoftTax Awareness & Adoption Seminar”, held at Lady Jibowu Hall, Government House, Ado-Ekiti and supported by Soft Alliance.
Addressing journalists after the engagement, the Chairman, Ekiti State Internal Revenue Service, Pastor Olaniran Olatona said the Central Billing System is more reliable and efficient.
He noted that the platform would enables tax payers to make payments easily, enable government track their payments and enable payers make any business deals with the state government with ease.
He said: “For the last four days, we have been having interaction sessions with our MDAS, with banks, with payment gateways, and with our own staff on harmonize Central Billing System, and look at how we can fuse some of these taxes together and issue a single bill. It will make it easier for people.
“We have also been advocating that people should not pay cash rather look at how we can upgrade our processes further, reduce the lickages and increase the IGR of Ekiti.
“The Central Billing System is more or less a computer application that you will log into to check your tax. You want to check your tax record system you check it there. In a situation where by you want to enjoy one services of government in one way or the other you are billed, and then after billing you have a bill number, after the bill number you make payments; it enables us to have a track record of your transaction with the government at a goal, which means if we call up your transaction portal we can tell how much have you paid as withholding tax, how much have you paid as capital tax, it is just more or less of having a compendium of all the taxes of your transactions with Ekiti State government.
“We are in discussion with our consultant in that if your phone is not smart you can use USSD to make payments and it will still reach the government account.”
Earlier, the Regional General Manager, Soft Alliance and Resources Ltd, Yusuf Oluwarotimi Azeem said the collaboration with the Ekiti Internal Revenue was inline with International standard .
He stressed the need for concerned persons to key into the CBS saying that the software for the digital payment was designed in way to block leakages and make it more convenient for customers to make payment.
The Bank representatives revealed that they were yet to fully engage the Central Payment system, but promised to key into it having been equipped with necessary information and its advantages.