The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has vowed to go after the bank accounts of defaulting taxpayers who are raking in billions in Nigeria but are not paying taxes.
FIRS Chairman, Tunde Fowler, in a statement on Sunday, disclosed that all banks in the country would do substitution on accounts for such identified taxpayers.
“There are over 6,772 of such defaulting billionaire taxpayers being identified by the FIRS, leveraging on banks data,” Fowler said.
He noted that most of such taxpayers, who have between N1b and N5 billion in their accounts have no Taxpayer Identification Number, TIN, or have TIN and have not filed any tax returns as taxpayers.
“What we have done is what we call ‘substitution‘ which also is in our laws which empowers us to appoint the banks as collection agents for tax.
“So, all these ones of TIN and no pay and no TIN and no pay, to the total of 6,772 will have their accounts frozen or put under substitution pending when they come forward.
”First, they refused to come forward in 2016, they refused to come forward under VAT and are still operating here.
”So, we are putting them under notice that it is their civic responsibility to pay tax and to file returns on these accounts”.
He explained that all businesses, partnerships, corporate accounts that have a minimum turnover of N1 billion per annum for the past three years were considered.
He said that the law stipulated that before you open a corporate account, part of the opening documentation is the tax I.D.
”From the 23 banks, we have analysed so far, we have 31,395 records, out of which effectively, minus duplications we had 18,602.
“We broke those into three categories: Those that have TIN tax I.D, those that don’t have TIN and of course no TIN no pay and those that have TIN and have not even paid anything.
“So, on a minimum, every company or business included here over the last three years have had a banking turnover of N3 billion and above.
“Some of them have had banking turnover of over N5 billion and have not paid one kobo in taxes. Now the total number of TIN and no pay is 6,772.” Fowler said.
The FIRS Chairman noted that taxpayers could now enjoy the flexibility of choosing their tax offices and paying online.
“Prior to now, at times your tax office can be an hour away from your office, taxpayers can now choose where their files reside .
”You can pay anywhere in the world: London, Dubai, New York, pay your taxes online and download your receipt immediately,” he said.
Citing the example of taxes FIRS is levying on corporates which have property, but are now being assessed on the value of their property’s turnover, Fowler clarified on why such property owners were being assessed for tax.
“First of all, banking turnover does not mean that is the turnover of your business; it simply means the money that has gone in and out of your account.
”But what the tax law says is that if you do not file your returns and you are in constant default, we use turnover as a basis of estimating your tax liability.
“For example, if your turnover is N100 million we assume that 20% of that is profit and we tax that at 30%.
“Some of them claim not to own the property, those of them that claim not to own the property and of course were sent to government,
”The Presidency will decide what would happen to those properties that have no owners. To those that have owners and have not paid they would be prosecuted.
”We are also in the process of going to court to get the approval of the court orders to sell those properties.
”We are not only doing that in Abuja, we have also concluded in Lagos. We are currently doing it in Osun, Oyo, Kaduna and eventually we would cover the whole federation.
“The idea here is simple, if you have had the opportunity to make your wealth in this economy, in this society, the least you can do is pay your tax.
“We have not included any group who by law are not meant to pay tax in this group.
”So far, we have sent out 2,980 letters and we believe that before the end of September we would get most of them out,” he said.
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