Nigeria is losing about $15 billion annually to tax evasion, Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr. Tunde Fowler, has said.
Fowler spoke yesterday as global tax experts converged on Abuja to find solution to offshore tax evasion.
At the meeting, the FIRS boss said Nigeria would implement the first Automatic Exchange of Information standard by 2020.
He said the regime was part of the country’s commitment to improve transparency in tax administration, increased tax revenue collection, enhanced effectiveness and efficiency service delivery.
Fowler said there was importance linkage between tax compliance, domestic tax investigation,tax audit, information gathering framework and the international infrastructure for exchange of information amongst authorities and nations.
“Nigeria had demonstrated her commitment to improve transparency around tax matters, when she signed a declaration and joined the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA) on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (AEOI) on 17th August 2017.
“…Nigeria has done all these to enable us conduct the first exchange of information under the automatic exchange of information regime by September 2020.
“I encourage those countries in the ECOWAS sub-region who have not committed to implement the AEOI standards to take necessary steps to do so, especially as the automatic exchange of information portend huge benefits for domestic resource mobilization,” Fowler explained.
He noted that increase in mobility of income and assets had created a challenge for tax administration and those governments across the world were joining efforts to address such challenges.
Fowler said the challenges offered a global response to the issues of international tax avoidance, tax evasion, illicit financial flows, money laundering and other harmful tax practices based cooperation and use of advanced technologies to tackle the issues.
Earlier, Mr. Babatunde Oladapo, the Executive Secretary, West Africa Tax Administration Forum (WATAF), said that the body was committed to contributing to the expansion of the global tax base through exchange of information.
Oladapo said efforts were on the closed gap among nations to ensure effective implementation of exchange of information and that tax administration could only be done successfully based on the availability of information.
He commended the OECD Global Forum for leading the drive for the automatic exchange of information that would ensure high network of individuals and multinationals were made to pay their taxes.
Also, the representative of the OECD Global Forum, Ervice Tchonaya, said that the forum’s core mandate was to ensure effective implementation of the international standard.
