Federal Inland Revenue Service boss says they will go after billionaire tax dodgers aggressively

FEDERAL Inland Revenue Service (Firs) chairman Tunde Fowler has said that he agency will begin probing the bank accounts of 6,772 billionaire tax defaulters as part of an aggressive move to generate revenue for the treasury.

Nigeria has one of the lowest tax intakes in the world, with a current tax to gross domestic product ratio of just 6% compared with say 20% in Ghana, 27% in South Africa, 16% in Egypt and 11% in Ethiopia. With oil exports accounting for a whopping 95% of government revenue, the need to generate more money from taxation has been a major policy initiative of finance minister Kemi Adeosun.

Speaking yesterday during a stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos, Mr Fowler said most of such tax defaulters have between N1bn and N5bn in their accounts but have no Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) and have not filed any tax returns. He added that such accounts will be frozen or put under substitution, pending when the owners come forward to identify themselves.

Mr Fowler said: “What we have done is what we call substitution, which is also in our laws and empowers us to appoint the banks as collection agents for tax. First, they refused to come forward in 2016, then they refused to come forward under Value Added Tax (Vat) and are still operating here, so, we are putting them under notice that it is their civic responsibility to pay tax and to file returns on these accounts.

“We looked into all businesses, partnerships, corporate accounts that have a minimum turnover of N1bn per annum for the past three years. So, on a minimum, every company or business included here over the last three years, have had a banking turnover of N3bn and above and some of them have had banking turnover of over N5bn and have not paid one kobo in taxes."

He added that from their records, the total number of companies with Tins but have paid no tax add up to 6,772. Mr Fowler pleaded with the commercial banks to support Firs as by supporting them they are supporting Nigeria, all Nigerians, those who have chosen Nigeria as home and a future that we can leave behind for the upcoming youth of Nigeria.

Firs is also paying closer attention to tax audit because it found out that a majority of the organisations that were allowed to do self-assessment did not truthfully declare or pay the taxes that were due. According to Mr Fowler, Firs has raised assessment of over N805bn from 1,324 national audits out of which 499 taxpayers have N219bn.

"N219bn can do a lot of things as it can provide certainly a lot more infrastructure, healthcare and educational facilities. These monies that are supposed to go into the federation account are shared between federal, local and state governments, so, every state can get an additional N1bn from such money,” Mr Fowler added.