FIRS to block tax evasion by multinationals, targets N8.5tr

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has placed a target of N8.5trillion as its 2020 tax revenue collection.

The target according to the FIRS is broken down into oil tax target of N3.7trillion and non-oil taxes target of N4.8trillion.

The chairman of FIRS, Muhammad Nami, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the FIRS management retreat, titled “Repositioning FIRS for efficient service delivery”.

He also said the FIRS would track and block tax avoidance schemes by multinational corporations in order to improve its tax revenue collection.

“For the year 2020, we have a target of N8.5trillion which is slightly lower than the 2019 target by N300 billion. Looking at our performance in the recent past, one may look at the 2020 target as ambitious, but I can assure you that it is achievable especially with the ongoing reforms  and business process re-engineering that are taking place in the Service” he said.

“These reforms are aimed at improving both filing and payment compliance, re-activating dormant taxpayers through aggressive intelligence gathering and information sharing and blocking of leakages” Nami said.

According to the chairman, if the FIRS is able to detect and block tax avoidance schemes by multinational corporations, it will improve tax revenue collection.

The chairman regretted that Nigeria currently loses about $10 billion (N3. 6trillion) through profit shifting by multinational corporations.

Also speaking, the chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Solomon Olamilekan Adeola,  warned that there are several agenda at the Senate to monitor the progress or otherwise of every revenue generating agency with a view to correcting lapses and resolving challenges.