The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has extended income tax filing deadline by one week for companies with December 31, 2019 as accounting year end. According to FIRS notice, the new deadline is now August 7, 2020 from the initial one-month extension ended July 31, 2020.

Other tax obligations that become due on July 31, 2020 were also covered under this extension. This includes Petroleum Profit Tax installment payment, Withholding Tax, and Value Added Tax Returns.  FIRS stated that any of these returns that are filed on or before the new deadline will not be penalized for late submission.

FIRS indicated that it would continue to identify with challenges of the times which taxpayers were going through.

WYZE opinion: We believe a week extension should run from August 4 – 10 as against August 3 – 7 stated in FIRS notice having declared July 30 & 31 as public holidays by the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Section 15 (3) of the Interpretation Act, LFN 2004 provides that “whereby an enactment, any act is authorized or required to be done on a particular day and that day is a holiday, it shall be deemed to be duly done if it is done on the next day which is not a holiday” i.e Monday August 3, 2020. Therefore, a week extension should run from Tuesday August 4 – Monday August 10, 2020.

We advise taxpayers who have not filed their tax returns to do so on or before FIRS’s new deadline of August 7, 2020 to avoid being penalized for late filing.