Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) has extended the deadline for filing the 2019 employers' annual tax returns to 8 February 2019. The due date for filing the returns is 31 January 2019.

According to a public notice issued by LIRS, the extension of the deadline was as a result of the high volume of returns that are yet to be filed on the recently deployed LIRS' e-filing platform. The extension of the deadline is driven by challenges experienced by taxpayers and tax consultants while attempting to file their returns on the portal. LIRS also stated that it had increased the internet bandwidth at its headquarters, in order to improve the speed and ease of filing the returns.

It is expected that the aforementioned challenges would be resolved and that the taxpayers would be able to file their annual tax returns seamlessly within the extended period.

We urge taxpayers who are yet to file their 2019 employers' annual tax returns to take advantage of this extension in order to avoid incurring penalty and interest charges.

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