Blockchain, others threatening tax collection

 Nduka Chiejina, (Asst. Editor), Abuja

INFORMATION Communication Technology (ICT)-based inventions, such as Blockchain, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), are making tax collection difficult, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) said on Tuesday.

Its Executive Chairman, Mr. Muhammad Nami, warned African tax collectors of the disruptive tendencies embedded in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Nami spoke in Abuja at the start of a three-day capacity building seminar for tax administrators from across West Africa, which the FIRS is hosting in collaboration with the West African Tax Administration Forum (WATAF) and the Inter-American Centre for Tax Administrations (CIAT).

He noted that these innovations have the beneficial tendency to help revenue agencies in their assigned national task, they also have the ability to undermine tax collection.

This, he said, is possible “because they have created new, fluid, hard-to-trace ways of doing business that makes it difficult for revenue agencies to tax their transactions”.

“In the world, the disruptive technological innovations such as Blockchain technology, Machine Learning and the whole gamut of AI have dire consequences for developing economies in terms of revenue loss and high staff turnover,” he said.

The effects he said were also in staff dissatisfaction and deliberate ‘Head hunting’ of the very best of workers by private entities which “continues to deplete our work force.”