MultiChoice Nigeria and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) have agreed to settle the pending dispute over the company’s tax liability outside court.
Part of the agreements reached requires the company to withdraw all pending lawsuits, while FIRS will now conduct a forensic system of the company’s accounts.
A statement jointly signed by the parties stated: “By the broad terms of the agreement, MultiChoice shall withdraw all pending lawsuits towards an amicable resolution of the dispute. Also, as part of the agreement, the FIRS commenced a Forensic Systems Audit of MultiChoice accounts on Tuesday, 8 March 2022 to determine the tax liability of the company.”
It would be recalled that the federal revenue agency had in July 2021 asked MultiChoice to pay N1.82 trillion as tax bills after appointing some commercial banks as agents to recover the amount.
The FIRS’ Executive Chairman, Muhammad Nami, explained that the banks were appointed as agents and used to freeze accounts because MultiChoice refused to grant FIRS access to its servers for audit.
Following its disagreement on the assessments, MultiChoice approached the tax appeal tribunal (TAT), which led to a series of cases at both the TAT and the federal high court.
In another case filed against FIRS, the company challenged the assessment of FIRS over unpaid value-added tax (VAT) amounting to $342 million
Based on the latest deal between the two parties, the resumption of the forensic systems audit is expected to commence soon.
