Senate has ordered Federal Inland Revenue Service to recover N17.6 billion tax evasion by some companies within 60 days and remit the money into Federal Government purse.
The Senate directive was sequel to the consideration of report of Senate Public Accounts Committee chaired by Senator Matthew Urhoghide on 2015 Audited Report.
The FIRS had in its response before the Committee claimed that it could no longer trace the addresses of the debtors.
The Upper Chamber in its resolution also directed FIRS to sanction its officers involved in alleged overlapping contracts and splitting between 2014 and 2015 and remit N32, 449, 743.61 into government coffers within 90 days with evidence of compliance submitted to the Auditor- General and the Senate Public Accounts Committee.
These were fallouts of the queries issued against FIRS and 104 other public agencies by the Office of Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2015 audit report, sustained and adopted by the Senate.
The Auditor General in the query on the N17billion unrecovered taxes by FIRS said: “The Federal Inland Revenue Service failed to recover the total sum of N17,690,341,565.00 from different companies in the year under review .
“The unrecovered taxes are made up of Value Added Tax, Company Income Tax (CIT), Withholding Tax ( WHT), Education Tax ( EDT) and NITDEF.
“Though the FIRS in its response to the query said it had recovered N2,879,152, 077.76 but actual receipted recoveries made by FIRS was N273, 038,474.74, leaving a balance of N17,417,303,090.90 to be recovered.
“Several companies were also discovered to have defaulted in filing their Annual Returns many of which FIRS said could not be located due to change of addresses “
The Senate in adopting the report, directed the Chairman of FIRS to recover the money and pay to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, just as it orders for blacklisting of all companies that failed to file their annual returns.
“Evidence of compliance should be forwarded to the Public Accounts Committee,” the Senate stressed.
The upper legislative chamber was tougher in its resolutions on alleged contract overlapping and splitting by some officers of the revenue generating agency by calling for their identification and sanctioning.
The query reads: “A contract for the sum of N32, 667,600.00 awarded by FIRS was split and distributed to four companies , whose submissions were earlier rejected, mainly to accommodate the approval ceiling of the Chairman , contrary to Financial Regulations 2921.
“The audit also revealed that a total of N32, 449,743,61 contracts under recurrent expenditure were awarded by the agency in the 2014 financial year and paid for in the month of January, 2015, contrary to financial regulation 414(b)”.
Angered by the infraction, the Senate in its adoption of the report, directed FIRS to pay the money back into government coffers and submit evidence of compliance to the office of Auditor General of the Federation and its Committee on Public Accounts.
