The Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, is giving 50% incentives and up to three months free to tax payers in the Area Councils to cushion the effect of Covid-19 on businesses and as part of its Palliative to business owners.

The Head of Revenue Division, AMAC, Mr. Awoje Danlami disclosed this during a Virtual Dialogue on Taxation and Post Covid Challenges for Businesses.

The Webinar powered by Cisco Webex was organised by the Abuja Municipal Area Council in collaboration with Swift Reporters and Digizens Collaborative Platform.

The Chairman of Abuja Municipal Area Council, Abdullahi Candido reiterated his administration efforts in mitigating economic impact of Covid-19 by easing the burdens on businesses within the Area Council.

“As a result of our sensitivity to this plight being faced by everyone, the council amongst strategies has opened up a citizens’ engagement and feedback mechanism through an e-governance system to enable us navigate through the pandemic,” Candido said.

The CEO, Cyber Alliance, USA ,Mrs. Niles Pyelshak who spoke on “Building Transparency and Accountabilities through Digital Innovations said;

”My organisation is directing its focus on Africa, especially Nigeria, to attract foreign investment and business relationships; address misnomers about Nigeria and build global confidence; identify cyber risks that could prohibit global attractiveness; reduce cyber attack occurrences that will negatively impact the economic brands across industries spanning the entire country and position Nigeria as a leader in connecting cyber policy, corporate governance and human behaviour.”

The Representatives of Remita, Mr. Victor Aletor in a presentation titled “Payment Platform For Taxes, Post Covid-19 Challenges To Businesses” said that AMAC has adopted the Remita online payment platform to streamline all its tax collections via multiple channels to make payment of taxes much easierfor the payers.

“To facilitate the effective and efficient processing of transactions, Remita makes use of Remita Retrieval Reference, a unique code that is generated for each transaction after the payer has completed the appropriate online payment forms,” Mr. Aletor explained.

He also noted that payment can be made online, through AMAC offices, POS, Digital Wallets, Cash Agents and NIBOX terminals which is able to accept cash payment.

The AMAC Supervisory Councillor on Finance, Gabriel Oluohu thanked all the partners that made the Virtual Dialogue a huge success.

He reiterated that all revenues generated by the Area Council would be judiciously put to use while calling on Tax payers to pay their tax on time.

Other highlights of the event were presentations on AMAC’s Future Digital Trajectory” by the Executive Director, Digizens Collaborative, Ms. Jayne Abuo and a presentation by the Divisional Head, Tenement Rate, Ms. Ann Ibrahim who spoke on ‘All you need to know about Tenement rate.’(VON)