The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has vowed that it will soon go after the bank accounts of defaulting taxpayers who are raking in billions in Nigeria and are not paying taxes.
FIRS Chairman, Mr. Tunde Fowler said the FIRS, through all banks in the country, will do substitution on accounts for such identified taxpayers, noting that “there are Over 6772 of such defaulting billionaire taxpayers been identified by the FIRS, leveraging on banks data.”
Fowler who disclosed this at a stakeholders’ meeting noted that “most of such taxpayers, who have between N1 and N5 billion in their accounts have no Taxpayer Identification Number, TIN, or have TIN and have not filed any tax returns as taxpayers.”
According to Fowler, “what we have done is what we call ‘’substitution‘’ which also is in our laws which empowers us to appoint the banks as collection agents for tax. So, all these ones of TIN and no pay and no TIN and no pay, to the total of 6772 will have their accounts frozen or put under substitution pending when they come forward.”
He added that “first, they refused to come forward in 2016, they refused to come forward under VAIDS and are still operating here. So, we are putting them under notice that it is their civic responsibility to pay tax and to file returns on these accounts.”
Fowler explained further that: “we looked at all businesses, partnerships, corporate accounts that have a minimum turnover of N1 billion per annum for the past three years. First of all, the law states clearly that before you open a corporate account, part of the opening documentation is the tax I.D. From the 23 banks, we have analysed so far, we have 31,395 records, out of which effectively minus duplications we had 18,602.”
“We broke those into three categories: Those that have TIN tax I.D; those that don’t have no TIN and of course no TIN no pay; and those that have TIN and have not even paid anything.
THE NATION
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