The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has tacitly admitted that it might not be able to comply with the order of the Senate to recover and remit into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) the sum of N17, 690, 341, 565.00 lost to tax evasion by some companies – because it could no longer trace the addresses of erring companies.
Muhammad Mamman Nami, to go after the defaulting agencies for recovery of the money and remit into CRF within 90 days.
The apex legislative chamber also directed the FIRS to sanction its officers involved in alleged overlapping contracts and splitting between 2014 and 2015, and remit N32, 449, 743.61 into government coffers within 90 days with evidence of compliance submitted to the Auditor-General and the Senate Public Accounts Committee.
The Assembly handed out these resolutions following the queries issued against the FIRS and 104 other public agencies by the Office of Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2015 Audit-report, sustained and adopted by the Senate before embarking on its annual recess.
But the FIRS, while responding to the queries before the Senate Public Accounts Committee, claimed that it could no longer trace the addresses of erring companies.
The Auditor-General, in the query on the N17.69 billion unrecovered taxes by FIRS said: “The Federal In- land 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 (VAT), Company Income Tax (CIT), Withholding Tax (WHT), Education Tax (EDT) 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 were 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.”
Apart from directing the Chairman of FIRS to recover the money and pay to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the Red Chamber also ordered for blacklisting of all companies that failed to file their annual returns.
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