- Considers freezing accounts
The
Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr.
Babatunde Fowler, has disclosed that the agency will soon target
defaulting taxpayers who have billions in their bank accounts but refuse
to honour tax obligations to the country.
He said over 6,772
billionaire taxpayers had been identified by the service leveraging on
bank data, adding that the FIRS would through all banks do what it
called substitution on accounts for such identified taxpayers.
The
FIRS boss spoke at a stakeholders’ meeting which held last Thursday in
Lagos, noting that those who had between N1 billion and N5 billion in
their accounts have no Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) or have an
identification but never filed any tax returns as tax payers.
Fowler
was quoted by a source as saying, “What we have done is what we call
‘substitution’ which also is in our laws which empowers us to appoint
the banks as collection agents for tax.
“So, all these ones of
TIN and no pay and no TIN and no pay, to the total of 6,772 will have
their accounts frozen or put under substitution pending when they come
forward.”
He said, “First, they refused to come forward in 2016,
they refused to come forward under VAT and are still operating here. So,
we are putting them under notice that it is their civic responsibility
to pay tax and to file returns on these accounts.
“We looked at
all businesses, partnerships, corporate accounts that have a minimum
turnover of N1 billion per annum for the past three years.
First
of all, the law states clearly that before you open a corporate
account, part of the opening documentation is the tax I.D. From the 23
banks, we have analysed so far, we have 31,395 records, out of which
effectively minus duplications we had 18,602.”
Continuing, he
said, “We broke those into three categories: Those that have TIN tax
I.D, those that don’t have no TIN and of course no TIN no pay and those
that have TIN and have not even paid anything.
“So, on a minimum,
every company or business included here over the last three years have
had a banking turnover of N3 billion and above. Some of them have had
banking turnover of over N5 billion and have not paid one kobo in taxes.
Now the total number of TIN and no pay is 6,772.
“So, if someone
is good in mathematics and you take the minimum level of N3 billion
multiply by 409 and they are operating within our society and economy
and do not remit or make any tax payment.”
Commenting further on
some far-reaching measures being taken against wealthy tax defaulters,
Fowler said, “…If you do not file your returns and you are in constant
default, we use turnover as a basis of estimating your tax liability’.
For example, if your turnover is N100 million, we assume that 20 per cent of that is profit and we tax that at 30 per cent.
He
said some of the people or companies “claim not to own the properties,
those of them that claim not to own the properties and of course were
sent to government, presidency to decide what would happen to those
properties that have no owners.
“To those that have owners and
have not paid, they would be prosecuted. We are also in the process of
going to court to get the approval of the court orders to sell those
properties.
“We are not only doing that in Abuja, we have
concluded it in Lagos. We are currently doing it in Osun, Oyo and Kaduna
States and eventually we would cover the whole federation.
“The
idea here is simple. If you have had the opportunity to make your wealth
in this economy, in this society, the least you can do is pay your tax.
“We
have not included any group who by law are not meant to pay tax in this
group. So far, we have sent out 2,980 letters and we believe that
before the end of September we would get most of them out.
