FIRS vows to recover all revenues accruable to government

By Mathew Dadiya

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has expressed its determination to recover all revenue accruable to the Federal Government.

To achieve the objective, the service said it had already listed companies and organisations indebted to the government in the fiscal year.

The Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr Babatunde Fowler, made this known in an address at the ongoing 30th Enugu International Trade Fair, in Enugu on Thursday.

Fowler, who was represented by Mr Ben Obiorah, Tax Controller, Micro and Small Office, Enugu, said that to fish out all outstanding revenue owed the federal government; they had, since 2018, focused on businesses with huge annual turnover.

“You may be aware that since 2018, FIRS has focused  attention on businesses with a huge turnover, but no record of commensurate payment of their tax obligations.

“This will continue in 2019, several of such companies have already been contacted by the device leveraging on various data sources.

 “We urge you all to comply with the provisions of the tax laws as we are duty bound to recover all revenue due to the FG  and the people of Nigeria,” he said.

He, however, urged the business community, law enforcement agents and well-meaning citizens to continue to partner with FIRS to ensure that tax defaulters were traced to face the consequences while compliant businesses would receive all the support they required.

Fowler said that the service was working hard to ensure that national revenue continue to grow through tax remittances.

“We at the FIRS are working hard to ensure that we are in full alignment with all efforts to grow national revenue from taxation while easing the administrative burden inherent.

“We place emphasis on human resources as one of several tools to achieving our aim of expanding the tax net which is why we recently recruited more young Nigerians to effectively provide adequate services to all the nooks and crannies of the country,” he said.