The Senate has ordered the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Mr. Muhammad Nami, to go after defaulting agencies for the recovery of N17 billion Tax evasion and remit it into Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) within 90 days.
Indeed, FIRS owned up to N17, 690, 341, 565.00 billion tax evasion by some companies whose addresses it claimed, could no longer be traced.
Similarly, the Nigerian Senate 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.
The revealation is sequel to the 2015 Audit report, sustained and adopted by the upper legislative chamber.
Specifically, 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.
The Auditor General in the query on the N17billion unrecovered taxes by FIRS said : “The Federal Inland Revenue Service failed to recover the total sum of N17,690,341,565.00billion 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, 077.76billion but actual receipted recoveries made by FIRS was N273, 038,474.74million, leaving a balance of N17,417,303,090.90billion 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”.
Consequently, 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.
Meanwhile, the upper legislative chamber was tougher in its resolutions on alleged contract overlapping and splitting by some officers of the revenue generating agency by calling for their identification and sanctioning.
The query read “A contract for the sum of N32, 667,600.00million awarded by FIRS , was split and distributed to four companies , whose submissions were earlier rejected , mainly to accommodate the approval ceiling of the Chairman , contrary to Financial Regulations 2921.
“The Audit also revealed that a total of N32, 449,743,61million contracts under recurrent expenditure were awarded by the agency in the 2014 financial year and paid for in the month of January , 2015, contrary to financial regulation 414(b)”.
Worried by the infraction, the Senate in its adoption of the report, directed FIRS to pay the money back into government coffers and submit evidence of compliance to the office of Auditor General of the Federation and its Committee on Public Accounts.
