As part of efforts to ensure optimal revenue yield, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has evolved a regime to ensure appropriate taxation of multinationals and enterprises operating in Nigeria.
The Acting Executive Chairman of FIRS, Alhaji Kabir Mashi, made this known at the opening of a stakeholders’ engagement on “Filing of Transfer Pricing (TP) Returns’’ yesterday in Lagos.
Transfer pricing generally involves setting appropriate prices for goods, services, assets, intellectual properties, loans, guarantees supplied or transferred by one enterprise to another, both of them being members of the same group or otherwise connected.
Mashi, represented by the coordinating director, Direct Report Group (DRG), Queensley Seghosime, said the regime would also help to fight tax evasion that are embedded in “under-pricing’’ of controlled transactions between associated enterprises.
He said that transfer pricing would reduce the issues associated with double taxation, provide taxable persons with certainty and a level playing field between multinational enterprises and independent enterprises doing business in Nigeria.
Mashi said the programme was meant to expose the various guidelines, forms and documents that would be used to file the TP returns in line with the its regulations as well as the relevant tax laws.
He said that Nigeria adopted the regulations and commenced implementation on transfer pricing in order to address the problem associated with shifting profit among enterprises.
“These are laudable objectives but it would not by itself translate to a success story unless the regime is properly implemented. It is only and only if we all play by the rule that the regime of transfer pricing in Niger could reposition our beloved country to a path of sustainable economic growth and rapid development,’’ he said.
Earlier, Mr. Ajayi Bamidele, Coordinating Director, Field Operations Group (FOG), said the Service had resolved to make transfer pricing a success through the establishment of Transfer Pricing Division (TPD) in FIRS Lagos office to drive the processes.
He said “Today’s event is part-fulfillment of our pledge to do the business of tax administration in partnership with our esteemed stakeholders, the taxpayer is indeed king to us.
