The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has been urged by the House of Representatives to collect taxes that the federal government’s Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) owe.
This came after a motion made by Esosa Iyawe (LP-Edo) was approved on Thursday during the plenary in Abuja.
The motion titled: “Alleged Non-Remittance and Under-Remittance of Tax by MDAs, Oil Companies and other organisations.”
Mr. Iyawe stated that in 2021, FIRS disclosed that certain undisclosed companies owed the federal government N17.690 billion in unpaid taxes. He further stated that no steps were taken to identify the companies or retrieve the funds.
He said that audit reports spanning the years 2015 to 2019 had shown that government agencies were also in arrears for hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes, with the majority of these being underpaid and underrecovered taxes from more than 500 MDAs.
He warned that if the problem was not resolved, the already collapsing economy of the nation might suffer greatly.
He claimed that while FIRS, state and local government agencies in Nigeria overtaxed small businesses, multinational corporations and other corporate organizations got away with it.
After the House adopted the motion, it directed its Committees on Public Accounts and Finance to look into MDA tax remittance noncompliance.
The committee is expected to provide a report for additional legislative action in four weeks.
