The Federal Inland Revenue Service said it had registered about 700,000 new corporate taxpayers in the last one year in a bid to widen the tax net and boost government revenue.
The agency also said it had commenced a voluntary compliance initiative aimed at assisting taxpayers to file tax returns as and when due, calculate their income, expenditure and tax liabilities, with a view to remitting the same to the FIRS.
The Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr. Tunde Fowler, stated these at the African Tax Administration Forum and International Monetary Fund seminar in Cape Town, South Africa.
A statement by the Head, Communications and Servicom Department, FIRS, Mr. Wahab Gbadamosi, stated that Fowler urged African leaders to grant autonomy to their tax agencies to enable them to function optimally.
Fowler, according to the statement, said that as a result of the autonomy granted the FIRS in 2007, the agency had been able to grow the tax revenue from N1.84tn that year to over N4.5tn in 2015.
The FIRS boss explained that the agency had also initiated and implemented various revenue collection projects and programmes to increase tax revenue.
Some of them are the upgrade of the existing tax offices, education and enlightenment activities for taxpayers and the introduction of the National Taxpayer Identification Number.
The statement read in part, “The FIRS chairman said that revenue authorities could function with less public service bottlenecks and have access to the resources required to deliver on their mandate for domestic resource mobilisation and funding for governments across Africa.
“He noted too that political support from the topmost level by political officeholders and general policy direction from the supervisory ministries of finance would be critical to the success of the revenue authorities.”
