Dipo Olowookere
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
About 700,000 companies are presently being tracked by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for failing to pay tax to the government.
Executive Chairman of FIRS, Mr Babatunde Fowler, told Reuters in an interview that his agency was hunting down on the tax defaulting firms because it was looking for ways to increase the country’s revenue sources.
According to him, the economic crisis in the country meant government must look at other ways to get money since its major source of income, crude oil, was suffering huge setbacks.
Mr Fowler also told Reuters that 10 million individuals are expected to be absolved into the tax system by December 2016 for the first time.
He said, “We collected a little over N2.3tn so far, from January to August 31. It is almost at par with last year but take into consideration that the economy is going through a little slowdown.”
Mr Fowler said further that, “We have been able to add about 700,000 companies and we expect to add about 10 million individuals across the nation by December.”
He disclosed that with this, the total number of taxable individuals in Nigeria would have hit 20 million.
According to him, revenue from Value Added Tax had increased by 25 per cent year-on-year and corporate income tax held steady over the same period, but petroleum profit tax was expected to have halved, mainly due to low oil prices.
