By Prince J Musa in Kenema
The National Revenue Authority (NRA) has ended a two-day capacity building programme for it staff on the Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) at their regional office in Kenema.
Speaking at the training held on the 24th and 25th August 2021, the Manager of Integrated Tax Administration System, Aminata Eyaminde Mansaray said ITAS is a project brought by the government to help improve on the method of collecting revenue in the country.
She said it will also make their work easier in collecting revenues due to the government by taxpayers and also to ease the burden on their clients in the payment of tax with no difficulty attached to it.
‘’We want to reduce the too much paperwork in NRA and for the customers paying tax to the government,’’ she said.
Ms Mansaray said ITAS is meant to administer all domestic taxes in the country as it has existed in other countries in the sub-region which has helped greatly in revenue mobilization for the government and that the the tax system is not an addition of tax for their clients in business.
She said the training will broaden the minds of the staff and build their capacity on how to collect the necessary information from their clients and input into the ITAS system in line with the technological advancement of the 21st century. With ITAS, she said customers will have to use their phones to send their information as long as the location is covered by network service and that clients can as well use the system to pay their goods and service tax and income tax.
She noted that for business people that are not literate, NRA will send their staff to their business places to collect their information or they will have to go to the NRA offices to access ITAS system.
She went on to note that the NRA has several components in terms of collecting tax such as non-tax department like the court fines, domestic tax department which are responsible to collect all taxes in the country, customs, and services department that deals with all imports goods coming into the country, adding that, non-tax revenue such as the court are not part of ITAS because they have their own system which NRA is working to improve.
‘’We are purely focusing on integrated tax administration system for domestic tax,’’ she said.
She said the customs and service department is in charge of transactions at border crossing points between Sierra Leone and its neighbouring countries.
The NRA Regional Manager East, George Bundeh referred to the integrated tax system as important for both the clients and them in the NRA and that it will speed up revenue collection without getting any physical transaction with workers.
He added that the system has helped a lot of countries to improve their revenue base. Bundeh encouraged business people to see the integrated tax system as a way of reducing stress on them in doing their businesses.
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