To ease payment and collection of taxes in the informal sector, the Edo State Internal Revenue Service (EIRS) has introduced the Revenue Scratch Card and Dealership Scheme.
This was revealed by the Executive Chairman/CEO, Edo State Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Igbinidu Inneh who stated that the Revenue Scratch Card, is a Mobile Payment System (MPS) component of the Edo Revenue Administration System (ERAS) designed to ease payments of taxes and levies on waste management, business premises, commercial transport operators, log control/regeneration, agricultural produce, presumptive tax, and other collections in the informal sector allowable under the relevant law.
According to the EIRS boss, “the mobile payment system will make citizen’s transaction experience convenient as the EIRS will now go to the taxpayers rather than expecting them to visit the bank thereby saving man-hours and business time.” He said, the new payment system would further block revenue leakages, enable government to efficiently collect and account for all taxes, levies, charges, as well as create job opportunities for the dealers and sub-dealers of the revenue scratch card.
Mr. Inneh further revealed, that the revenue scratch card dealership structure was designed to enable a seamless distribution of the scratch cards from the EIRS down to its end users, who are the taxpayers. He said the structure has multiple stages with the dealers at the first stage. The accredited dealers buy revenue scratch cards from the EIRS at a discount and in turn sell to sub-dealers also at a discounted rate. While the sub-dealers sell cards to taxpayers at the face value.
“It is instructive to note that selling of cards do not amount to collection of revenue. Payment of taxes or revenue is only recognized at the point where the tax payer presents the revenue scratch card to the revenue collector (staff of EIRS) who activates the card with an Android Point of Sales (PoS) machine”.
“Other benefits enumerated apart from providing convenience to taxpayers, are the creation of thousands of jobs in the retailing of the revenue scratch card for the teeming youths in the state by recruiting and managing sub-dealers who will earn their income from the discount system on a daily basis, creation of wealth through the return on investment (ROI) for the dealers and sub-dealers.
