For days, businesses have reportedly been unable to file their taxes due to system failures, portal downtime, and unresolved technical issues. These are not minor inconveniences; they directly affect compliance, cash flow planning, statutory deadlines, and ultimately trust in the tax system. When businesses—who make up a relatively small, structured, and compliant segment of taxpayers—cannot file returns for days, it raises a serious question: how will the same system cope with millions of individual taxpayers?
Nigeria’s tax authority, formerly known as the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and now rebranded under the National Revenue Service (NRS), was meant to represent reform, efficiency, and modernization. Instead, what many businesses are experiencing today is a system increasingly detached from the realities of those it is meant to serve.
For days, businesses have reportedly been unable to file their taxes due to system failures, portal downtime, and unresolved technical issues. These are not minor inconveniences; they directly affect compliance, cash flow planning, statutory deadlines, and ultimately trust in the tax system. When businesses—who make up a relatively small, structured, and compliant segment of taxpayers—cannot file returns for days, it raises a serious question: how will the same system cope with millions of individual taxpayers?
This concern becomes even more troubling when placed beside the optics of leadership. At a time when systems are failing, confidence is eroding, and taxpayers are left stranded, reports and public commentary circulate about the head of the tax authority, often referred to as “Zacs” or “Zachs,” living in conspicuous luxury—symbolized in public discourse by the alleged wearing of a ₦25 million wristwatch. Whether literal or symbolic, the image resonates deeply with citizens: excess at the top, inefficiency below.
The comparison many have drawn to the biblical Zacchaeus is not accidental. In scripture, Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector who amassed wealth while the people suffered under an unjust system. The story only finds redemption when he acknowledges wrongdoing and makes restitution. In Nigeria’s case, however, taxpayers are still waiting—not for luxury displays, but for functioning systems, clarity, and accountability.
Tax compliance depends on a social contract: citizens pay taxes in exchange for fairness, efficiency, and responsible stewardship. When tax portals collapse, deadlines remain unchanged, penalties loom, and communication is poor, that contract is broken. Compliance begins to feel less like civic duty and more like punishment.
If businesses—entities with accountants, tax advisers, and dedicated compliance teams—are locked out of the system for days, the planned expansion and enforcement of individual tax filing risks becoming chaotic, inequitable, and punitive. Individuals do not have tax departments. They rely entirely on simple, reliable systems. Without that, enforcement becomes oppression rather than administration.
The issue is not taxation itself. Taxes are necessary. The issue is leadership priorities, institutional competence, and empathy for the taxpayer. A tax authority should project discipline, restraint, and service—not extravagance amid dysfunction.
Until the NRS/FIRS fixes its systems, communicates transparently, and demonstrates that leadership understands the hardship caused by these failures, public trust will continue to erode. And without trust, no tax system—no matter how aggressively enforced—can truly succeed.
Mohammed Moses