According to FIRS boss, agencies such as Customs, NIMASA, NPA and others have no statutory business and core mandate in revenue collection.
The House of Representatives Committee on Finance on Wednesday approved the sum of N446.34bn as budgetary allocation for the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for the 2024 fiscal year.
The budget estimate comprises N177.44bn as personnel cost; N156.45bn as overhead cost and N112.45bn as capital expenditures.
The approval was a sequel to the presentation of the budget estimates by the Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Mr Zacch Adedeji when he appeared before the Committee.
Mr. Adedeji said that “the budget projections were based on the assumptions of crude oil production of 1.78mb/d for 2024; crude oil price projection on the average of $77.96/b and average exchange rate of N800/1USD.
“Our expected revenue for 2024 is 446 billion because the mandate given to us through the MTEF is to collect 19 trillion which is an additional N7 trillion compared to what we collected in 2023. The bulk of it is coming from positive projection from oil and gas revenue.
“If we are to meet the ambitious 19 trillion coming from where we are coming from, we need to restructure from within and then we restructure the service to be more focused. So, instead of having types of taxes, what we do now is to categorise by the turnover which is the customer focus. Now we have a large tax if your turnover is above 5 billion. Between 1 and 5 billion is medium and anything less than one is small taxpayer.”
“The reason for this is simple. We want to provide a one-stop shop for taxpayers. Where one can do all forms of taxes. This would reduce multiple audits and distractions to the businesses. It is our intention that 80 per cent of core service jobs are done by the service.”
He further revealed that the agency would be leveraging technology such as tax promax, and ICT single window project, among others to increase revenue collection performance and create an environment that is conducive for taxpayers.
Adedeji expressed displeasure and lamented that agencies such as the Nigeria Customs Service, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, (NIMASA), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) and others have no statutory business and core mandate in revenue collection.
In his remarks, the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, James Faleke (APC, Lagos) hailed the FIRS boss for tax collecting innovations and urged the FIRS to do everything possible to block all revenue leakages to boost Nigeria’s revenue.
