By Bida Elly David
The National Revenue Authority (NRA) has directed tax collecting institutions in the state to ensure immediate and full implementation of the E-tax system to ease collection of taxes as well as mitigate issues of fraud and misconducts.
In a statement seen by No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper yesterday, Africano Mande the deputy commissioner for the NRA reiterated that the introduction of the digital collection device was a response to the initiative of the E-government system which was previously decided upon.
He stated that the impression of the E-taxation system would play a greater role in minimizing errors such as poor receipting, mismanagement of monetary collections generated from custom duties.
Africano commended some tax collecting institutions such as the Juba City Council for having started the use of the device as mandated by the Revenue Authority saying that they deserved credit.
He said that manual revenue collections over the past years have been impartial as some clearing agents lacked experience and worked on self-interest affecting total generation of revenues.
“I present my complement to the office of the Mayor H.W Michael Lado Allah-Jabu for the full implementation of the digital collection by state man solutions and integration of all systems with the E-government system” he said.
Africano recommended that the institutions should employ qualified employees to perform affirmative data entry generated from the documents issued to clients during the collection.
“Now that some institutions have started using the E-taxation device, I advise and recommend that they implement fully the digital collection in order to increase their collections to avoid outflows and back tracking to manual collection” he said.
The NRA’s deputy commissioner general recommended that the digital system used by the local and the state tax agencies should correlate with the E-government system to avoid data entry problems.
“I also recommend that your digital system must interface with the E-government service system and the E-tax system so that you can also have the visibility of your clients based on the tax identification Number (TIN) that each of them obtained,’’ said Africano.
The National Revenue Authority in 2021 faced a lot of challenges regarding border revenue generation as the level of cash outflow skyrocket to a high level. The agency also registered a number of corruption cases among staff where so many traders raised complaints over double charges and fines imposed on their businesses.
To address the matter, the institution developed the concept of introducing the E-taxation device meant to reduce the corruption happening in the border through systematic data trading entry.