FIRS to commence tax audit of NNPC, others

By Ali Smart

The Federal Government on Thursday mandated the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) to audit the financial activities of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) along with Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

The Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Mr Babatunde Fowler, gave this hint in Abuja while addressing members of the Senate Committee on Public Accounts.

According to the FIR S boss, the audit of organisation like the NNPC and some of the MDAs became inevitable because most of them had not been remitting Value Added Tax and Withholding Tax to government coffers.

Read also: FIRS targets N4.9trn in taxes to fund 2016 budget

To address this, the FIRS, he said was already in discussion with the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun to do a joint audit on all federal ministries, departments and agencies.

“We have also written to all the state governors requesting for their cooperation and that they should help put in place a system whereby all federal government taxes that are due from the state governments are also remitted electronically. I am glad to report that as at last week, the Ogun state governor has responded and we are still waiting for responses from other state governments.”

In addition to these measures, the FIRS is “also putting in place a system in the office of the Accountant General to ensure that all payments done by government and all taxes due are deducted immediately and remitted to the Federation Account for onward distribution by the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC).

The Chairman of the Public Accounts committee of the Senate, Senator Andy Uba, said his committee had received complaints from the Auditor General of the Federation that the FIRS had not reflected the four percent collection fee in its financial statements since 2010.

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