FIRS collects N7.5 trillion taxes – Chairman

Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Muhammad Nami says it has collected N7.5 trillion taxes in 2022 and also surpassed the Tertiary Education Tax, EDT fund target for the year with N4 billion.

Nami stated this during its 2022 Tertiary Education Fund, TETFUND/FIRS joint interactive forum in Kano.

The FIRS boss who was represented by the Kano State Coordinator, Hassan Sule said the Tertiary Education Tax, EDT target for 2022 was N305 billion but as at September 2022, it has collected N309 billion.

According to him, “It is noteworthy that despite the economic headwinds, particularly from the negative consequences of Covid-19, rising insecurity and the spill-over effects of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global economy, FIRS has continued to make progress in revenue mobilization for the three tiers of government, suffice to say that the FIRS is now funding a significant portion of the Federal Account Allocation Committee, FAAC in the last 2 years.

“Between January to September 2022, FIRS has collected N7.5 trillion which is a significant improvement on the total collection of N6.4 trillion for the entire 2021. Non-oil taxes accounted for N4.3 trillion while petroleum profits tax accounted for N3.1 trillion. It is clear that the reforms undertaken since 2020 have started yielding the desired results.

“Tertiary Education Tax also improved significantly since the beginning of 2022. We have collected N309 billion as of September 2022, which is above the total N305 billion budgeted for the full year.

“I assure you that we will continue to ensure that no revenue gap is left uncovered in our quest to improve tax administration with particular emphasis on full deployment of technology across our service lines and internal operations,” Nami said.

The FIRS boss also reaffirmed the position of the service noting that it is not relenting it effort towards achieving the N500 billion Education Tax fund annually target by the TETFUND.

Earlier, in his welcome address, TETFUND Executive Secretary, Arc. Sonny Echono said the fund placed a very high premium on attaining and surpassing the target of N500 billion earlier set.

Echono represented by his Director, Human Resources and General Administration, Bar. Adamu Abubakar applauded the FIRS for surpassing the 2022 target noting that due to low EDT in 2021, it scaled down project implementation for the year in our beneficiary institutions in 2022.

“In year 2021, the fund received an EDT collection of N189 billion, which was considerably lower than the previous year’s collection. This posed a serious challenge to the intervention activities of the fund for the year 2022. We had to seriously scale down project implementation for the year in our beneficiary institutions and our internal operations as well,” he said.

Meanwhile, the fund has a mandate of general improvement of education in federal and state tertiary educations specifically for the provision or maintenance of essential Physical Infrastructure for teaching and learning, Instructional material and equipment, Research and Publications and Academic Staff Training and Development among others.

(Vanguard)