The Federal Inland Revenue Services, FIRS, is set to compel some state governments to remit various taxes collected on its behalf over a period of five years.
This is coming as the federal government is contemplating deductions from their monthly federal allocations as an option.
The executive chairman of the FIRS, Babatunde Fowler, who made this known on Tuesday, April 19, also revealed that less than 20 per cent of the taxes which include the value added tax (VAT), withholding tax (WHT) and CIT, collected by the affected states were unaccounted for, adding that “a lot of states never remitted taxes” yet benefit from the monthly federal allocation.
Fowler, who spoke at the ongoing investigative public hearing on the ‘FIRS Accounting Procedures’ organized by a House of Representatives Adhoc Committee chaired by Michael Enyong Okon, unveiled plans to shore-up the country’s revenue by raising the tax base of companies operating in the country from N10 million to N20 million by the end of 2016 fiscal year.
He added that the Joint Tax Board meeting held recently in Kano State also resolved to increase the figure of tax payers at the state level from 10 million to 20 million by May 2016.
Fowler disclosed that 363,000 tax payers have so far been captured into the tax net since his resumption, adding that as from May 2, 2016, all federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) are to begin to remit appropriate taxes, including the VAT and WHT deducted from payments to contractors into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
“So far the sum of N700 billion VAT has been realized by the FIRS out of the N2 trillion for this year while over 100,000 companies operating across the country have never paid taxes,” Fowler said.
