Director-General, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Dr Chinyere Almona, has called on the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) to immediately extend the statutory deadline for the filing of Company Income Tax (CIT) returns by one month and waive all penalties arising from the failure of the newly launched Rev360 tax filing platform on the filing deadline.

While acknowledging that many businesses traditionally wait until the final days before statutory deadlines to submit their tax returns, she noted that taxpayers who made genuine efforts to comply with the June 30 deadline were significantly hindered by technical failures completely out of their control.

Rev360, the NRS’s new digital tax administration platform launched approximately two months ago as part of the implementation of Nigeria’s new tax administration framework, experienced prolonged service disruptions on June 30, the statutory deadline for Company Income Tax filings.

Businesses across the country reported widespread login failures, system timeouts, validation errors, failed document uploads and unsuccessful submission attempts, preventing many compliant taxpayers from meeting their filing obligations.

Recognising that large-scale digital platforms often experience initial implementation challenges, she regretted that launching a mission-critical system so close to a major statutory deadline without sufficient stress testing for peak traffic has exposed capacity limitations that have unfairly shifted the consequences of system failure onto taxpayers.

A modern tax administration system, she said, should improve compliance by making tax filing easier, more efficient and more predictable. Businesses should not be penalised for technological failures within government infrastructure over which they have no control.

She therefore called on the NRS to urgently extend the filing deadline by one month; waive all late filing penalties and related sanctions for companies that attempted to file on or before June 30 but were unable to complete their submissions because of the Rev360 outage and immediately strengthen the technical capacity, reliability and resilience of the platform before subsequent filing deadlines to restore taxpayer confidence and ensure uninterrupted service delivery.

“The Chamber believes these measures are necessary to preserve confidence in Nigeria’s ongoing tax reforms and to reinforce the principles of fairness, certainty and voluntary compliance that underpin an effective tax administration system. Digital transformation remains essential to improving tax collection, reducing compliance costs, and broadening the tax base. However, successful digital reforms require robust infrastructure, adequate user testing, stakeholder engagement and a phased implementation approach that minimises disruption to businesses.”

She noted that businesses that have consistently demonstrated their willingness to comply with tax laws should not be disadvantaged by avoidable system outages.