FIRS: Billionaire tax offenders respond with N13b
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has raked in N12.66 billion, from billionaire tax defaulters following threat of sanctions barely a month ago.
FIRS’ Executive Chairman Tunde Fowler broke the news at the weekend when he received Finance Minister Hajia Zainab Ahmed, who was on a familiarisation visit to the Revenue House FIRS Headquarters in Abuja.
Fowler told the minister that the initiative has pooled about N12. 66 billion into the government coffers.
He said: “FIRS wrote to all commercial banks in May 2018, requesting for a list of companies, partnerships, and enterprises with a banking turnover of N1 billion and above.
“This activity is aimed at ascertaining those companies that are compliant with the tax laws and those that are not compliant. So far, non-compliant organisation has paid about N12.66 billion.
“The FIRS will continue to implement initiatives that will drive compliance and generate revenue by continuous taxpayer enlightenment, implementation of the Auto VAT Collect in other sectors of the economy, simplification of the tax processes, especially for small taxpayers, strengthening collaborations with other agencies such as CAC, States Boards of Internal Revenue, ministry of Trade & Investment, Nigeria Customs Service”, Fowler said.
The FIRS chairman added that, the Service realised N2.983 billion from payment on demand notices on property owners who are being assessed based on their turnover and that 653 of 2, 672 of such non-filers have starting filing now.
