30th April, 2014
The Acting Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS), Alhaji Kabir Mashi, has said that the service recorded a shortfall of N140 billion in revenue collection in the first quarter of the year.
Speaking at the operational management meeting of its Eastern Region in Owerri on Wednesday, Mashi said the drop in revenue was recorded in the non-oil tax.
He said the service realised a total non-oil tax of N418 billion between January and March as against the target of N558 billion.
According to him, the non-oil collection dropped from N155 billion in January to N133 billion in February and further down to N130 billion in March.
“These results are not impressive and we must do everything possible to ensure that we reverse this negative collection trend,” he said.
Mashi said the current focus of the Federal Government was to raise non-oil revenue to the level of making up for any shortfall from oil revenue.
He said the service also needed to justify the support it had been getting from the government.
He urged the staff to focus on deliberations on service delivery and maximising the tax revenue potential in their areas of operation.
He explained that the programme was based on eight key initiatives which included auditing, arrears and debt enforcement, tax exemption, evasion of rental taxes and taxing high net worth transactions.
Others were registration, filing and utilising communications as a means of enhancing compliance.
Marshi said the service had conducted a nationwide value added tax and withholding tax audits and that the results had started coming in.
“We will be proactive in reviewing returns as they come in and following up to ensure that taxpayers pay up their assessments within the time allowed in our laws.
“Thereafter, we will follow up the audit returns without allowing a backlog to pile up,” he said.
Earlier in his address, the Coordinating Director of Field Operations Group at the FIRS, Ajayi Bamidele, said the service would strive to collect N700 billion revenue in the second quarter to make up for first quarter’s poor performance.
He presented the analysis of the non-oil collection report from the six departments of the service, particularly from the Eastern Region and South East Zonal Government Business office.
He said that from the analysis, the Eastern Region was top in performance with 62 per cent, with Owerri area operations recording the best performance with 110 per cent.
Bamidele said his office had adopted the development of standard check list for field offices to ease response to headquarters, monitoring visits and fast tracking conclusion of audit cases as measures to ensure high performance of staff members.
Bamidele identified some of the challenges facing field operations as deterioration of work ethics and values and the failure of supervising officers to take responsibilities.