By Economic Confidential
Chairman
of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr. Samuel Ogungbesan has
disclosed that the service generated an unprecedented N1.97 billion into the
federation account within the first six months of 2015 in spite of harsh
economic conditions.
Speaking during an interview with an editorial team from Economic
Confidential in his office recently, Ogungbesan however, insinuated that much
more could be generated from tax in the country if the states would work in
harmony with federal authorities and condition of living of Nigerians is improved
upon.
“Aggregate of tax collection from January to date is what gave us
that N1.8trillion. In actual fact it is N1.97 trillion as at the end of June.
The collection in June 2015 is the highest collection by FIRS in its history in
a single month. The total collection for June is N746 billion.”
Ogungbesan said there was no magic to the performance as it was
accomplished simply by deploying years of experience on the job and tinkering
here and there with the internal workings of FIRS to increase performance efficiency.
“Let me just say that there really is no magic about it, I mean,
we’ve not gone outside of the country to borrow ideas, the fact is that we have
been part of this system for many years.
“When we came on board in March this year, thought we needed to do
some tinkering with our organizational structure”
Right now he said, tax administration functions have been
demarcated with different officers responsible for raising assessment,
collection, company tax audit and tax enlightenment and so minimising
incidences of compromise and leakages in the system.
Ogungbesan harped on the need for co-operation and synergy between
states and federal tax administrators as a way of tremendously improving tax
administration and revenue.
“Some tax administrators at the state level don’t trust the centre
so what the centre should do is to make sure that it is able to work well with
the states to create trust and confidence” he stated and cited the example of
when sales tax was still being collected in the country.
“All of us put together in a period of six years collected
N2.6billion! But we started VAT in 1994, in the first year alone, we made
N8.7billion”, lamenting a situation whereby states are refusing to cooperate
with FIRS even though the Service was the country focal point for tax
administration.
Ogungbesan contested the aspect of the 2014 rebasing of the
Nigerian economy concerning the aspect of tax to GDP ratio.
According to him, when the collation was being done, only
statistics of FIRS was taken and used to determine the new figures whereas each
of the 36 states maintains a board of Inland Revenue Service, while local
governments councils also collect various forms of levies and taxes.
“The more reason why states and FIRS should even work together is
the fact that when so-called experts are calculating tax to GDP ratio for the
country, you hear a lot of people saying oh, it is 7.5% or, 8.5% and it is the
lowest in Africa, but they are ignorant people.
“They leave out the income taxes collected by the 36 states governments
and only focus on that of the Federal Capital Territory. What calculation are
you doing? The day we made it known to the former Finance minister, Ngozi
Okonjo-iweala, she said oh!” That was where it ended”, he declared
The man who also doubles as Chairman of the Joint Tax Board (JTB)
was also sincere in admitting that the parlous state of the economy was also
making tax administration and collection difficult.
“Two years ago, it was MTN alone that paid almost N120 billion but
that same company today is struggling to even pay N80 billion and that says a
lot. People will say the telecom companies are doing fine but it isn’t easy for
all of them now because of the cost of doing business.”
And concerning individuals, Ogungbesan said “the attitude of the
people out there is: I provide my security I provide my water and generate my
power. Why are you disturbing me about taxes?”
He also decried the prevalence of multiplicity of taxes, which he
described as the bane of our economy but said a Bill was already being
finalised by the Office of Attorney General of the Federation to streamline the
number of taxes and levies that will be permitted within the economy.
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