Muhammad Nami, Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, has cautioned the West Africa Tax Administration Forum(WATAF) on the disruptive tendencies embedded in the Fourth Industrial Revolution being driven by powerful Information and Communication Technology -based inventions like Block chain, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
Nami said while these technological innovations have the beneficial tendency to help revenue agencies in their assigned national task, they also have great ability to undermine tax collection because they have created new, fluid, hard-to-trace ways of doing business that makes it difficult for revenue agencies to tax their transactions.
At the WATAF capacity building seminar for tax administrators from across West Africa, held in Abuja Tuesday, Nami explained that the disruptive technological innovations in the world presently, such as Block chain technology, Machine Learning and the whole gamut of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have dire consequences for developing economies in terms of revenue loss and high staff turnover.
Speaking further, Nami stressed on the need for Managers of Human Resources in Tax Administration to recognize the dynamics of changes occurring in the world in terms of the way businesses are being done and reported with a view to adjusting accordingly in order for these revenue agencies to meet their mandates to the government and people of their respective nations.
“The effects are also in the areas of staff dissatisfaction and deliberate ‘Head hunting’ of the very best of our staff by private entities which continue to deplete our work force”, he said.
“The increasing recognition of the important role of tax administrations in sustainable domestic revenue mobilization for our governments has expanded our scope of operations thereby making it necessary for us to re-jig our approach to human resources management”.
“I call on you all to make a resolution that after this three-day training you will form a mind-set that i tuned towards harnessing previously untapped potentials that exist in our systems by optimal use of our human resources in accordance with the global best practices.”
Babatunde Oladapo, Executive secretary, WATAF said that ensuring competence and integrity of tax administrators is critical in ensuring improved and sustainable domestic revenue for member states, adding that there is an urgent need to develop an institute for tax resource management in Africa.
Oladapo noted the urgent need to promote stronger capacity among tax administrators as challenges that constraint revenue collection emerges too often.
He said, “There is need for us to build up capacity of our tax administrators as we realize that human capital plays a vital role in tax administration in the region”.
“As we focus on broadening our tax coverage, investing in human capital should be our priority hence the need to re-strategize on approach to human resource management”.
Cynthia Egboboh, Abuja.
