President Muhammadu Buhari expects today, Monday, August 19 the response of his query to Babatunde Fowler, the chief executive of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) on a cumulative N3.9trillion unmet tax revenue target for a 4-year period.
Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff to the President in an August 8, 2019 letter queried the FIRS chairman over the Agency’s inability to meet target revenue from 2015 to 2018.
Business Day checks at the FIRS revenue collection statistics show that in 2015 it failed to meet set target of N4.7 trillion by N800million as only N3.7 trillion was the actual collection.
In 2016 the target collections was N4.2 trillion but actual was N3.3trillion, representing a shortfall of N900million. In 2017, FIRS targeted N4.8trillion but the actual collection was N4trillion, which represented an unmet target of N800million.
Also, in 2018, despite a target of N6.7trillion set, only N5.3trillion was actual collection representing a shortfall of N1.4trillion.
Before 2015, FIRS had not only met its yearly target revenue, but was also able to surpass. Further check shows that in 2007, it targeted N1.75trillion but actual revenue was N1.84trillion. In 2008, it targeted N2.27trillion while N2.972trillion was actually collected.
In 2009, the FIRS set target revenue of N1.90trillion while the actual collection was N2.19trillion. Also, in 2010, despite setting a target of N2.55trillion, the FIRS recorded actual collection of N2.83trillion.
In 2011, the FIRS set target of N3.63trillion but the actual collection reached N4.628trillion. Likewise, in 2012, despite N3.63trillion target, the revenue agency collected N5.007trillion; in 2013, it set N4.468trillion target but collected N4.805trillion; while in 2014, it surpassed the N4.086trillion set target with a record actual collection of N4.714trillion.
Aso Rock in the query to FIRS chairman said, “We observed significant variance between the budgeted collection and actual collection for the period 2015 to 2018. Accordingly, you are kindly invited to submit a comprehensive variance analysis between budgeted and actual collection of each main tax item for each of the years 2015 to 2018”.
The query further reads, “Furthermore, we observe that the actual collections for the period 2015 to 2017 were significantly worse than what was collected between 2012 and 2014.
“Accordingly, you are kindly invited to explain the reasons for the poor collections. You are kindly invited to respond by 19 August 2019,” the ‘restricted’ query reads.
Iheanyi Nwachukwu
