The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has admitted that it has lost up to N17, 690, 341, 565.00 billion to some companies whose addresses it claimed could no longer be traced.
Following this development, the Senate has ordered the Executive Chairman of the agency, Muhammad Nami to go after the defaulting agencies for recovery of the money and remit it into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) within 90 days .
The agency was also directed to sanction its officers involved in alleged overlapping of contracts and splitting between 2014 and 2015 and remit N32, 449, 743.61million into government coffers within 90 days with evidence of compliance submitted to the Auditor-General and the Senate Public Accounts Committee.
BusinessDay learnt thar these were some of the 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.
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In the query, the Auditor-General said: “The Federal Inland Revenue Service failed to recover the total sum of N17,690,341,565.00 billion from different companies in the year under review.
“The unrecovered taxes are made up of Value Added Tax( VAT), 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, 077.76billion but actual receipted recoveries made by FIRS was N273, 038,474.74million, leaving a balance of N17,417,303,090.90billion to be recovered.
“Several companies were also discovered to have defaulted in filling their Annual Returns many of which FIRS said could not be located due to change of addresses.”
In adopting the report, the Senate directed the Chairman of FIRS to recover the money and pay it into the Consolidated Revenue Fund just as it orders for blacklisting of all companies that failed to file their annual returns.
The Senate also stressed that evidence of compliance should be forwarded to the Public Accounts Committee.
The query reads: “A contract for the sum of N32, 667,600.00million 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, 449,743,61million 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 Commitee on Public Accounts.
