FIRS moves to capture MDAs revenue, waivers as taxes

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has disclosed that henceforth government revenue, tax waivers, import duty waivers among others will be captured as tax revenues to the Federation.

The FIRS said that this will improve Nigeria’s tax-to-GDP ratio performance.

The FIRS Executive Chairman, Muhammed Nami disclosed this on Monday at the First National Symposium on the theme “Taxation and the challenges of external shocks: Lessons and policy options for Nigeria” held in Abuja.

He said: “In order to state government revenue correctly, and to ensure that all government revenue is included in the fiscal accounts and annual statistics,  the FIRS will through the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, ensure that all government revenue is included in the accounting for taxes generated, amounts invested by taxpayers in our road infrastructure as a result of executive order 007, tax waivers granted pioneer companies, import and exercise duties waived through the operations of the Nigeria Customs and all other revenues generated by MDAs on behalf of the Federal, State and Local governments in Nigeria.”

The above measures, he said “when implemented, will align Nigeria with global best practice in reporting public finance and will ensure a more transparent and more accurate picture of the country’s Tax-to-GDP ratio.”

He said as much as the country needs to continually and conscientiously put measures in place to improve such a concern, there is also the need to comprehensively bring the entire national and sub-national revenue sources into consideration to properly and appropriately determine the correct and meaningful tax-to-GDP ratio for the country.

Nami noted that “The current basis for its computation, which mostly focuses on the taxes administered at the federal level and leaving out other sources of revenue being generated by the federal, states and local governments and their MDAs, does not truly reflect its correct standing.”