By Adedapo Adesanya
A total of 23,141 defaulters owe federal government the sum of N254 billion in tax liabilities, according to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), through its Executive Chairman, Mr Babatunde Fowler, at the 49th annual accountant conference organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
Mr Fowler said was collaborating with commercial banks to ensure the recovery of the defaulted taxes, stressing that, “FIRS in collaboration with the banks has started engaging in compliance measures with regard to the tax defaulters and their accounts.”
“Failure to carry out this directive will result in the banks being sanctioned according to Section 31 subsection 1-3 and 32 respectively of the FIRS Act 2007,” he added.
The Chairman also said that out of 44,293 non-compliant companies, 3,976 already paid about N97.7 billion, disclosing that the agency recovered N88.59 billion after reaching an agreement with 3,797 out of 42,736 companies.
Under the agency’s tax substitution programme, the FIRS collect taxes from default payers by appointing banks and other financial institutions as collection agents.
As collection agents, the banks were directed to make specific deductions from alleged tax defaulters’ accounts and pay such over to the FIRS in full or partial payment of the alleged tax debt.
Mr Fowler then said if the default continues, the agency will apply appropriate sanctions by delisting defaulting banks from the FIRS collection list.
There have since been concerns raised by stakeholders over the method adopted by the agency in the collection of tax debts.
Dipo Olowookere