Abuja – Babatunde Fowler, chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), is in the eye of the storm as he is expected to be at the Presidential Villa, Abuja today to explain why there has been a continuous decrease in tax revenue collection in the last four years.
Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, had in a letter dated August 8, 2019, queried the FIRS chief executive of worsening tax collection since 2015.
The Chief of Staff said that the presidency “observed significant variances between the budgeted collections and actual collections for the period 2015 to 2018.”
Economic analysts have also confirmed that since 2015, the FIRS under Fowler has not been able to meet collection targets “which is a different trend from the preceding years.”
The presidency while expressing concern by the variance, said, ”You are kindly invited to submit a comprehensive variance analysis explaining the reasons for the variances between the budgeted collections and actual collections for each main tax item for each of the years 2015 to 2018.”
In 2015, FIRS set N4.7 trillion target but was only able to make N3.7 trillion in the actual collection.
In 2016, 2017 and 2018, the target collections were N4.2 trillion, N4.8 trillion and N6.7 trillion but the actual collections were N3.3 trillion, N4.0 trillion and N5.3 trillion, respectively.
Fowler, a former chairman of Lagos State Revenue Board, was appointed FIRS boss in 2015, when President Buhari won his first term election.
He succeeded Samuel Odugbesan appointed by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Breakdown of Nigeria’s tax statistics showed that before President Buhari and Fowler came in 2015, the only year FIRS could not meet its collection target was 2006 since the year 2000.
But in the query served Fowler, the presidency only mentioned 2012 to 2014.
“Further we have observed that actual collections for the period between 2015 and 2017 were significantly worse than what was collected between 2012 and 2014,” stated Kyari.
The post Presidency Summons FIRS Boss Over Declining Revenue Collection appeared first on Independent Newspapers Nigeria.
Source: Independent
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