Tax Alert - Issue No. 7.1

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has issued a Public Notice extending the deadline for the filing of 2023 Companies Income Tax (CIT) returns and payment of relevant tax liabilities by companies whose returns fall due between 30 June and 31 August 2023 (both days inclusive) to 31 August 2023.

Based on the above, companies with accounting year-end of 31 December and 31 January have been granted a two-month and one-month extension, respectively.  Consequently, affected companies now have until 31 August 2023 to submit their returns on TaxPro-Max (TPM) and settle any resulting tax liabilities to avoid payment of late filing penalties and interest from the original due date.

The one-time extension applies only to the 2023 Year of Assessment CIT returns and does not include other taxes.  The FIRS has also urged taxpayers to take advantage of the opportunity to resolve all outstanding issues and file their returns within the new deadline.

While we commend the FIRS for extending the due date for the 2023 CIT returns, however, there are still some lingering issues with the TPM that require urgent attention to ensure that affected taxpayers can benefit from the extended deadline.  For example, there have been inconsistencies in the tax information shown on taxpayers’ profiles such as inaccurate unrelieved losses balances, unreconciled WHT credit balances, etc.

Taxpayers affected by these issues are unable to accurately reconcile their tax positions on TPM in order to generate the relevant payment reference numbers to settle their tax liabilities.  It is, therefore, important that affected taxpayers and the FIRS Technology team take advantage of the extended deadline to permanently address and resolve these recurring issues.