The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has allayed concerns expressed by stakeholders in the oil and gas sector about the challenges they may face when they eventually adopt the electronic invoicing (E-Invoicing) platform for their tax payments.

FIRS gave the assurance during an engagement forum held with the stakeholders on Monday, in Ikeja, Lagos, as its pilot phase for the initiative, which was rolled out in November 2024, wraps up, before it finally goes live in July 2025.

According to FIRS, the engagement with players in the sector is aimed at addressing concerns regarding infrastructure, educating players in the sector about its uses, benefits, as well as cross-border integration, in its efforts to use digitisation to revolutionalise tax administration in Nigeria.

Lead consultant for the e-invoicing project, Sadiq Arogundade, said the engagement with the sector is imperative because of its immense contribution to the country.

“We’ve had several engagements with other industries and we also figure that the oil and gas play a major role, contributing big to the commerce of the country. It is important that we also get your feedback, so that we can shape these products to the best form,” Mr Arogundade said.

Explaining what the platform is about, Mr Arogundade said, “The world has now moved from the usual traditional invoicing. What you do today is, you generate your invoice from your ARP or accounting system, attach it to an email and send it to the beneficiary of that invoice.

He said, “It is a fully API-driven ecosystem. Rather than building a commercial product, FIRS is enabling businesses to plug into the system and develop their own compatible tools.

He added, “It represents value, trust and commitment between a buyer and seller or merchant or supplier, whatever the case may be. As long as there is an agreement that I must supply goods to you, then there is always a need for an invoice, that is where our concern is.”

“We want to upgrade to Tax Administration 3.0, it’s also in line with global best standards. What we’re basically doing is connect to your natural system. We’re saying, don’t bring your invoices in your Ghana Must Go, let us be able to connect because we’re now at that level of technology sophistication stage where we’re able to match with your ARP enhancement as well. We don’t want to go manual, we now want to automate,” he further stated. 

The primary focus of the platform, which is to better capture the 7.5 per cent Value Added Tax (VAT) rate approved by the federal government, as well as to ease the payment for users, and enhance real-time transaction visibility in order to promote transparency and boost tax compliance, is also operational for withholding tax, company income tax, and personal income tax.

While stakeholders expressed worry that the peculiarities of their businesses may not allow them key into the project on time, even long after the launch in July, the director of FIRS’ technology department, Richard Kimeku said, “we’re following a gradual adoption strategy, starting with large taxpayers, then moving down the chain,” to medium and small enterprises, adding that integration to the platform, at the moment is optional but will be made mandatory much later.