The House of Representatives Committee on Finance has approved N446.34bn as budget 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.
The Committee’s approval followed the presentation of the budget estimates by the Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Mr. Zacch Adedeji.
The Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mr. Zacch 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.”
Adedeji stated that the agency has mapped out strategies to achieve the projections for collections.
He said; “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 are to meet the ambitious 19 trillion coming from where we are coming from, we actually 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 turn over which is the customer focus. Now we have large tax if your turnover is above 5 billion. Between 1 and 5 billion is medium and anything less than one is small tax payer.”
“The reason for this is simple. We want to provide a one stop shop for tax payers. Where one can do all forms of taxes.
“This would reduce multiple audits and distraction to the businesses. It is our intention that 80 percent of core service job is done by the service,” the Lawmakers explained.
Adedeji also said that FIRS would be leveraging on technology such tax promax, ICT single window project, among others to increase revenue collection performance and create an environment that is conducive for taxpayers.
He said that FIRS was working towards having a single agent and collector of all revenues accruing to the Federal Government to address leakages.
Adedeji said; “We are doing a lot of reform including the single window. because if you look at firs what we collect mainly of company income tax. With our fundamental reform to achieve this target would be easy for us. The problem we have is that we do not have verifiable data in the country. So one of the major things we are doing which hopefully in the next two weeks max or one month, a law would be sent to the House to change that all Nigerians must have one single number of identification which by law today is NIN. The plan is to make sure everything we do as citizens is linked directly to this NIN.
This would help address issue of tax leakage. This would help address issues of leakages. Achieving target. There are fundamental pillars which targets stands on. One oil production. With improved security, hopefully we would be able to meet our oil production target. as far as that is done we would be able to meet our target.”
He lamented that agencies such as Customs, NIMASA, NPA and others have no statutory business and core mandate in revenue collection.
Speaking on the budget, the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, James Faleke commended the FIRS boss for tax collecting innovations.
He urged the FIRS to do everything possible to block all revenue leakages and shore up the Nigeria’s revenue.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
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