👨🏿‍🚀 TechCabal Daily – Nigeria Raises $22 Billion In Taxes

CRYPTOCURRENCY MARKET

Bitcoin	$22,628	– 1.87%
Ether	$1,545	– 5.58%
bnb	$299	– 6.75%
Solarium	$22.87	– 8.21%
coin name coin price 24 hour percentage change		Font: CoinMarketCap

* Data as of 04:50 AM WAT, January 25, 2023.

NIGERIA GENERATES $22 BILLION IN TAXES

How did Nigeria do in the tax department last year?

The West African country’s tax agency, the Federal Internal Revenue Service (FIRS), released the report on its performance in 2022, and it appears that FIRS conducted better last year than in 2021.

What does the report say?

The report shows that FIRS raised a total of ₦10.1 trillion ($22 billion) in oil and non-oil revenue, more than the ₦6.405 trillion ($11.1 billion) it raised in 2021. In fact, this is the first time the service reached the £10 billion mark.

Non-oil revenues represented more than half —59%— of tax revenues in that year.

Non-oil revenue includes corporate income tax, which was ₦2.83 trillion ($6.22 billion); Value Added Tax which turned out to be ₦2.51 trillion ($5.51 billion); and assigned taxes that totaled ₦353.69 billion ($77.7 million).

FIRS Chief Executive Muhammad Nami said the agency was able to exceed its targets thanks to collaboration with stakeholders, effective taxpayer education and improved tax morale.

SEND BY FLUTTERWAVE

CAPE TOWN WILL PAY RESIDENTS FOR THEIR ENERGY

It seems that excess energy is not always a bad thing.

Cape Town residents and businesses will soon be able to feed excess electrical power from their own generators into their power system in exchange for cash.

The South African National Energy Regulator (NERSA) has approved a tariff of 78.98c/kWh for the city to pay power sellers. Cape Town also offers an additional incentive fee of 25c/kWh.

Before now, energy sellers were credited with excess energy on their municipal bills, rather than actual cash payments.

ICYMI: South Africa has been experiencing power cuts as Eskom, which supplies most of the country’s electricity, has been struggling to keep the lights on and has been implementing load cuts over the years.

Cape Town got a waiver from the government’s National Treasury to implement this power purchase plan with cash incentives to curb blackouts.

The program’s payment system will be implemented for commercial customers before June, while households with city-approved generation and capacity systems will get theirs before the end of the year.

What are the city-approved generation systems?

In order to sell excess power to their city, the Capetonians need to have a power generator like a solar system and advanced metering infrastructure meter installed by the city. The meter will tell you how much power your system consumes and generates.

KENYA HIGH COURT APPROVES TRANSFER FEES BETWEEN M-PESA AND BANKS

Kenyans are not happy about this.

The two-year streak of free transfers between M-Pesa and commercial banks has come to an end, and a recent ruling suspending the charges has been overturned.

Interestingly, the banks did not even care about this ruling. They had continued to charge without the backing of the court. But now that the Kenyan High Court has approved the transfer fees, Kenyans have only one option: pay the charges for the transfers they thought would be free forever.

Bottom: In 2020, the year of the pandemic that caused the historic drop in the use of cash, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) came up with the idea of ​​making free transfers between commercial banks and users of Safaricom’s M-Pesa, the main operator. of mobile money in the country. The idea caught on and Kenyans became more digital payments adopters. It was free, after all.

But as the pandemic gradually faded, Safaricom and the banks turned to the CBK and sought approval to reintroduce transfer fees. The CBK finally agreed in December last year but stipulated a reduction in fees: 61% reduction for transfers from bank accounts to mobile money wallets. And a 47% reduction in mobile money account charges to banks.

Kenyans said no and brought the law

The charges began this month but were suspended again when a Kenyan court received a lawsuit against Safaricom and the CBK. The lawsuit was brought by Moses Wafula, a Nairobi resident who argued that such charges should be paid by Safaricom’s major customers, such as banks, utilities and government agencies, not by regular customers.

The CBK opposed this, arguing that the regulator and the banks had not yet joined the case, and the suspension should only come after all parties have presented their positions on the matter. The judge then ordered all parties to file a response by February 6, 2023.

For now though, the charges don’t seem to be going anywhere.

GROW WITH PAYSTACK

EVENT: STATE OF TECHNOLOGY IN AFRICA Q4 2022

Join us on January 27 for a special edition of TechCabal Live. We will be launching the “State of Technology Report”. The State of Technology Report is our flagship report analyzing quarterly data on acquisitions, expansions, product launches and financing in the African technology ecosystem.

This edition takes a look back at 2022 and contains interesting patterns and trends to watch out for this year. At the event, we will discuss with you the practical insights and findings of the report and share our perspectives on the outlook for Africa’s technology landscape.

Click here to save a place.