The Senate has directed the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to locate companies that failed to pay their taxes in 2015 and compel them to fulfil their fiscal obligations as provided in the relevant tax laws.
The decision of the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly was sequel to a report by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (AuGF), which indicated that the revenue agency lost up to N17.69 billion in 2015 to some companies whose addresses it claimed could no longer be traced.
The Senate ordered the Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Muhammad Nami, to trace the defaulters, recover and remit the revenue to the consolidated revenue fund (CRF) within 90 days.
The order based on the recommendations by the committee on public accounts in its report on the audit queries issued by the auditor-general for the year under review.
This is even as it advised the federal revenue agency to also blacklist companies that failed to file their annual tax returns as provided by the laws.
The AuGF had queried that “the Federal Inland Revenue Service failed to recover the total sum of N17,690,341,565 from different companies in the year under review.
“The unrecovered taxes are made up of Value Added Tax, Company Income Tax, Withholding Tax, Education Tax and NITDEF.
“Though the FIRS in its response to the query said it had recovered N2,879,152, 077.76 but actual receipted recoveries made by FIRS was N273, 038,474.74, leaving a balance of N17,417,303,090.90 to be recovered.
“Several companies were also discovered to have defaulted in filing their annual returns, many of which FIRS said could not be located due to change of addresses
“A contract for the sum of N32, 667,600.00 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 query added.
The audit report also showed that a total of N32, 449,743,61 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).
With the adoption of the Auditor General’s report, the Senate also ordered the Executive Chairman of the FIRS to sanction officials involved in alleged overlapping and splitting of contracts between 2014 and 2015.
It also directed the agency to remit N32.44 million into government coffers within 90 days with evidence of compliance submitted to the Auditor General and the Senate Public Accounts Committee.
