The Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) says Nigeria lost N1.3 trillion to granting of tax waivers to companies operating in three sectors of the economy in the last five years.
Chairman of FIRS, Muhammad Nami, made the disclosure at an investigative hearing organised for revenue generating agencies in the country.
The hearing was organised by the Senate Committee on Finance.
Muhammad, while making his remark, said: ”When I resumed office, I realised that from this waivers alone, we reviewed just three sectors, a total sum of N1.3 trillion was lost as tax revenue in five years.
“This is just three sectors out of myriads of waivers that have been granted to these people.
“These people mostly are doing well and have much money from Nigeria, they exploited the lacuna in our laws, obtain waivers and worked away with over N1.3 trillion in the last five years,” he said.
Mohammed noted that FIRS had issues with funding of its operations, given the huge personnel cost of the organisation.
”So, we have issues that has to do with inadequate funding of our operations too. This is actually the issues we want the senate to look at when we come up in our quarterly meeting . We have huge overhead cost, our overhead should be the largest in the country now.
”We have about 10,000 employees and the little we generate, given the huge personal cost, we are left with little to fund our operation. On this note, we want to appeal that you carry out an upward reform in the cost our collection,” he said.
He said the inability of the FIRS to meet its target on revenue generation was not unconnected with the issues of insecurity, slow growth and ease of doing business in the country, adding that the tax waiver granted had also compounded the issue of illicit financial flow from the country.
