Revenue leakages: Senate orders FIRS to recover N17 billion from defaulters

As revealed by the 2015 Audit report, management of the Federal Inland Revenue Service ( FIRS) , owned up to N17,690, 341,565.00 billion tax evasion by some companies whose addresses it claimed, could no longer be traced .

This is as the Senate ordered the Executive Chairman of the agency, Muhammad Mamman Nami, to go after the defaulting agencies for recovery of the money and remit it into Consolidated Revenue Fund. (CRF) within 90 days.

It also directed FIRS to sanction its officers involved in alleged overlapping contracts and splitting between 2014 and 2015 and remit N32,449,743.61million into government coffers within 90 days with evidence of compliance submitted to the Auditor-General and the Senate Public Accounts Commitee.

These were fallouts of the queries issued against FIRS and 104 other public agencies by the Office of Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2015 Audit report , sustained and adopted by the Senate.

The Auditor General in the query on the N17 billion unrecovered taxes by FIRS said: “The Federal Inland Revenue Service failed to recover the total sum of N17,690,341,565.00 billion from different companies in the year under review.

“The unrecovered taxes are made up of Value Added Tax( VAT), Company Income Tax( CIT), Withholding Tax ( WHT), Education Tax ( EDT) and NITDEF.

“Though the FIRS in its response to the query said it had recovered N2,879,152, 077.76 billion but actual receipted recoveries made by FIRS was N273, 038,474.74 million, leaving a balance of N17,417,303,090.90 billion to be recovered.

“Several companies were also discovered to have defaulted in filling their Annual Returns many of which FIRS said could not be located due to change of addresses.”

The Senate in adopting the report, directed the Chairman of FIRS to recover the money and pay to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, just as it orders for blacklisting of all companies that failed to file their annual returns.

“Evidence of compliance should be forwarded to the Public Accounts Commitee”, the Senate stressed.