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The presidency is poised to intervene in the festering war between Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST) and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) over stamp duty collection.
Persons conversant with the matter, this week in Abuja, told IT Edge News that the president is likely to rule in favour of the postal agency. The consensual thinking within the presidency appears to agree with the argument of the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy that NIPOST has the statutory mandate for stamp duty collection, the sources disclosed.
Nigeria’s tax agency, the FIRS has been at loggerheads with the NIPOST as the former seeks to assert its authority as the sole agency responsible for tax collection in Nigeria.
But the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Isah Ali Pantami, whose ministry has supervisory role over the NIPOST, has consistently insisted that the NIPOST should be allowed to collect stamp duty the way Customs authority collects duties.
In accordance with the Stamp Duty Act of 2004, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in January 2016, directed commercial banks to start deduction of N50 for any transaction above N1000.
The CBN directive, it would appear, had spurred the FIRS to assert its authority as the tax agency to collect the duty and by implication, be entitled to collect 4% on the amount accruable to government in a year from stamp duty, as expenses it incurred in the course of stamp duty collection.
Critics have condemned the FIRS role as arbitrary and self-serving as it has no mandate to collect an amount statutorily deducted from source into NIPOST’s federation account.
“The FIRS want to collect 4% as services charge for doing nothing; just for merely being FIRS, it wants to usurp NIPOST’s role,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy.
The statute empowers NIPOST not the FIRS to perform the task of affixing N50 stamp on transactional documents. It is therefore absurd to have a tax agency wrestling rights over revenue from stamp duty,” added the official.
The Chairman of NIPOST, Maimuna Yaya Abubakar, recently in a series of tweets accused the FIRS of stealing the mandate of the postal agency.
“I am worried for NIPOST, having sleepless nights because of NIPOST, we need the general public to come to our aid; FIRS stole our mandate. FIRS are now selling stamps instead of buying from us. What is happening, are we expected to keep quiet and let FIRS kill and bury NIPOST?
“We need to get our mandate. NIPOST are the sole custodians of national stamps, another agency printing and selling stamps is against the law of the land,” Abubakar tweeted raising alarm that the FIRS was already infringing on NIPOST statutory powers as the sole authority empowered to print postage stamps.
Similarly, the Postmaster General of the Federation, Ismail Adewusi assured staff during a recent two-day meeting in Abuja of NIPOST’s district postal managers, that the postal agency was working to reassert its mandate of collecting stamp duty from the FIRS.
He told the senior staff that much progress has been made in the discussions between the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr Pantami and his counterpart, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to address the issue.
