The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has asked social media content creators, including Instagram, and TikTok users with large followers, to register their businesses with the commission in accordance with the Company and Allied Matters Act 2020.
The Registrar General of the commission, Hussaini Magaji made the call when the Managing Director of Opay, Dauda Gotring paid him a courtesy visit on Tuesday.
The call confirms insinuation in some quarters that the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) is planning to onboard media content and influencers into its tax system.
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The visit by the Opay team was to ensure the regularisation of 300,000 agents and merchants with the commission, which is aimed at expanding the tax net, encourage businesses, and create more jobs for Nigerians.
Last week, the commission began the registration of two million small businesses in partnership with Moniepoint, a fintech company.
The CAC boss stated that social media and content creators are generating a lot of money without paying any form of tax to the Federal Government.
“Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. It is stated in the Company and Allied Matters 2020 that for any business to take place in Nigeria, whether you are doing business with your name or another name, you must surrender your business for registration.
“If you are a content creator on the internet and you have a large followership and you are gaining or making money from it, you must register and that’s the provision of the law.
“And we are all out to enforce the provision of the law with its penalties,” Magaji said.
He added that the commission will soon begin compliance checks to ensure these businesses start paying their taxes to the government.
According to him, “This cannot go on, these groups of people are under mandate to register as a business considering the amount they make from the content creation. The government is all out to ensure every business in Nigeria, no matter what or how, is registered with the CAC.
“The commission is registering another batch of 300,000 business names from Opay.”
The CAC boss said the initiative is part of his target to register 20 million businesses in 2024 and 50 million jobs target for Nigerian youths.
On his part, the Opay MD noted that the idea behind Opay operations is to deliver banking services to the unbanked persons in the country.
“Opay is ready to partner with CAC to ensure these groups of people have their businesses registered, with their consent though,” he said.
Gotring said the Opay organisation is working to ensure that all companies no matter how little, as long as you operate as a business you should be registered with the CAC.
He added that since Opay handles, “these accounts they are working on sensitising the owners of the accounts so they can be registered with CAC.”
