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The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has said that it is working towards blocking about 10 billion dollars tax leakages by multinational corporations operating in the country who engaged in illicit profit shifting.
FIRS Executive Chairman, Mr. Muhammad Nami said this at the 2020 Corporate Plan Retreat of the service in Abuja.
He added that if the country was able to detect and block tax avoidance schemes by multinational corporations, it would be able to improve its tax revenue collection.
“Since I assumed office as chairman, we have revised the organisational structure of the service that reflected management aspiration reviewed and redesigned tax audit and investigations functions and currently we are reviewing all lien cases with a view to closing them and introduce new enforcement strategies.
“In addition, we have initiated several reform projects with a view to reversing our current performance level to a more acceptable level by government,” he said.
The FIRS boss, however, stated that the service was targeting 10 per cent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio in the next four years.
Nami said the service was also targeting a minimum of 5 million dollars staff to revenue ratio within the period.
According to him, the service has agreed that in the next four years it will improve its performance on a long term and sustainable basis.
In her remarks, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed said taxation was key to government’s plans to diversify the economy.
Represented by Ms Fatima Hayyatu, Director Technical Department, Ahmed said that the present administration’s plan to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years could be realised through improved revenue that would be generated by agencies of government like FIRS to develop infrastructure. She urged participants at the retreat to fashion out ways to boost revenue generation especially in the non-oil sector.
The FIRS boss also said that the service is targeting N8.5 trillion revenue for the country in 2020.
He explained that the N8.5 trillion target was broken down into oil tax target of N3.698 trillion and non-oil taxes target of N4.8 trillion.
He stated that assessing the service’s performance in the recent past, one could look at 2020 target as ambitious but it was achievable.
The FIRS boss assured that the target was achievable and realisable especially with the ongoing reforms and business process re-engineering that were currently taking place in the service.
According to him, these reforms are aimed at improving both filing and payment compliance, re-activation of dormant taxpayers through aggressive intelligence gathering and information sharing and blocking of leakages.
“In 2019, the FIRS achieved total tax revenue collection of N5.263 trillion against target of N8.802 trillion which translated to about 60 per cent target achievement for the year.
“The performance was slightly lower than the 2018 collection of N5.32 trillion by N57 billion. Oil tax collection for the year was N2.111 trillion which was 49 per cent achievement of its annual target of N4.301 trillion and accounted for 40 per cent contribution to the total collection.
“On the other hand, non-oil taxes collection for the year was N3.152 trillion which was 70 per cent achievements of the annual target of N4.501 trillion and accounted for 60 per cent contribution to the total collection,” he explained.
On the retreat, the chairman noted that the event was a flagship in the service’s planning cycle and a platform where staff and management review the performance of the service in the immediate past year and map out goals and strategies for achieving set objectives for the current year.
He reiterated the commitment of the service in working to realise President Muhammadu Buhari’s vision at taking 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years by collecting robust revenue to develop infrastructure.