Tax Administration in Nigeria: a Case Study of Federal Inland Revenue Service(Firs)

1972 - The Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division separated from the IRS to become the independent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (Internal Revenue Service, 2013).

The issues of taxation

Discuss the internal Revenue Code: The internal revenue code is a main statutory authority that formed in 1986, known as the code. It has the same authoritative weight as tax treaties and supreme court rulings. The internal revenue code is very different than the other authority all administrative and judicial except tax treaties and constitution which seems to clarification of it. in the Internal Revenue code, every year congress tends to pass legislature that changes the code. The Internal revenue code is separated into subtitles, chapters, subchapters, parts, subparts and sections. However, whenever the researcher referring a tax law, they generally are referring to the law that is simply by its code sections, which are numbered from 1 to 9834 with gaps in the section umbers to allow new code sections to be added to the appropriate parts of the code as needed. It is very important that we understand the organization of code section in order for us to cite the respective law correctly. Therefore, if we do not understand the organization of the code, it will be very difficult for us to interpret the code section and to regulate its relevancy to a research

Then there is the Internal Revenue act of 1861, which increased income tax rate. This assured us that the government would have a, “reliable source of income to pay the interest of war bonds” (119). In addition to that, we have the Subsequent Revenue act of 1862 and 1864, which allowed for progressive tax bracket. This act had a tax system that put a tax on everything, for example, medicines, yachts, and etc. The Morril tariff Act of 1860 and 1861 was a reform in which the tax was doubled on items in which customs tax could be collected. Furthermore, the National banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 encouraged people to carry out national currency and national charters. Provision of the 1864, which executed a 10 percent tax on the banknotes of the states. Because the tax base grew by a significant amount a Bureau of Internal Revenue had to be created to control and regulate the tax needs.

Taxes is when the state takes a percentage of the money you make to help the community or the state. Also one reason we get taxed is to pay off the government workers. Another reason we get taxed is to pay for the public buildings and public roads we use like libraries, schools, and highways. Finally another reason we get taxed is to help the poor or less unfortunate also to help an organization.

This are done through the design of appropriate strategies and programs to ease stakeholders’ compliance burden and bring about an efficient and improved tax delivery services to customers. TOG’s key functions include the assessment of persons, including companies and enterprises, liable to tax, as well as the assessments, collection, accounting and enforcing payment of taxes. These functions are carried out through the departments and functional units of the Group. The Compliance and Enforcement Group provides the FIRS with the platforms necessary to enhance voluntary compliance within the tax system. Its ultimate goal is to ensure that tax revenue collection is enhanced through the mobilization of the appropriate policy and legal frameworks. In order to achieve cohesion in the implementation of organizational goals, the various Groups and Departments involved in compliance and enforcement activities strive to build synergy in the performance of their duties. In appropriate cases, the Tax Operations Group refers cases of default of payment of tax to the Compliance and Enforcement Group to be handled by the Legal and Prosecution Department. The relevant organs of the service have carried out important activities towards enforcing taxpayer

Internal Revenue Service. The federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing the Treasury Department's revenue laws, through the assessment and collection of taxes, determination of pension plan qualification, and related activities.

It is already two hundred years since the United States independence. For the long time development, it has formed a relatively perfect tax system and tax administration system. The United States has more than 80 federal and state taxes, the implementation of the income tax as the main complex tax system. US citizens and companies are generally not personally declare taxes, but the tax agency accounting firm commissioned by them. Through the continuous improvement of the legislation on the tax agency industry, the US government gradually form a transparent, fair and standardized tax agency market. Especially the United States Treasury Department revised circular No. 230 requires tax preparer to be competent and to adhere to ethical standards in order to protect taxpayers and the IRS. Besides these, it carried out its detailed specification on the behavior of the tax agency personnel, including vocational qualifications, responsibilities and limitations and penalties for irregularities. Meanwhile, AICPA Statements on Standards for Tax Services address problems inherent in the tax practitioner’s dual role in serving the client and the public, and Intended to supplement AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and Circular 230.

The federal income tax system is an intricate system and increases its complexity through newly enacted laws and regulations. The tax codes are difficult to decipher; however, it is a system that maintains the development of an entire country. The political aspects serve to focus on major loopholes and develop strategies for improvements. The laws and regulations highly coincide and work cohesively to obtain its objectives. Undoing or restructuring the federal tax system would cause a major disruption on economic and social terms (Prescott, & Hardin, 2013).

5.The major goals at the Internal Revenue Service are to ensure that the taxpayer understands the tax laws, assist taxpayer’s with complying with the tax laws and enforce the tax law when needed. The Accounts Management

Income tax is considered to be one of the greatest ways that a country amasses wealth through known means from the public in order to use the funds for the benefit and welfare of the community. Since a very long time, there have been many discussions and debates on the way the finds collected for income tax have been spend. There are many who think that there is a lot of mismanagement and feel that the amount of the actual money spent on welfare of the community is far less that what gets collected by the country.

This paper examines the generally accepted desirable characteristic of a system of taxation. I describe in this paper that even where every one agrees that the tax system should be simple as dictated by the first maxim of Adam Smith, no country is yet to meet this standard. Questions on policy, complexity, equity, administrative efficiency, cost of compliance all increasing the cry for a tax change. Many Eastern Europeans have adopted the flax tax system and presently has an increase economic growth. However, are they fully operating the flax tax system?

Tax system is a legal system of imposing and collecting taxes from the citizens of the country. As it has been stated by Albert Einstein, the hardest task in the world is to understand the tax system of a country. The United States’ tax system is so complicated that its tax code contains almost 3 million words and 6,000 pages. Moreover, the taxes implied by city and state governments add more complexity to the federal taxation system. In this case, we do not need to understand the complexity of tax code system in order to get acquainted with the significant role of taxes in American society.

Taxation systems are usually modeled in such a way that they take into consideration the social welfare of the citizens. The government and other policy makers have the responsibility of ensuring that the system takes into account the needs of the citizens. The bottom line is that taxation should foster equal distribution of resources. The rate of taxation is usually arrived at after several considerations have been made. The rates are not fixed as they depend on the various economic changes. The issue of how taxation should be distributed among the different economic classes is yet to be addressed.

I’ve summed up the introduction of Taxation to these slight words. Taxation is defined as a way that the government able to generate or collect revenue from the citizen of one’s nation through different sources. As what I’ve learned from Taxation course that there are two types of taxation, direct which are paid by the taxpayer directly to the government, and indirect which are collected by an intermediary (like a retail store) from the consumer. The intermediary who will file the tax return later and forward the amount of the money to the government with the return. This tax is applicable to organizations and individuals. In this reflection, I would like to highlight what I learned of business and individual taxation, the experience on working with a group for the project and what challenges I faced and how I was able to get past.