FIRS comes hard on tax offenders in Bayelsa, Edo

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has intensified efforts to make tax defaulters pay up what they owe the Federal Government in Bayelsa and Edo State.

The FIRS in Yenagoa raided organisations such as hotels, restaurants, supermarkets among others that refused to pay their annual tax or fail to remit taxes collected by them on behalf of the Federal Government.

This was even as the

Tax Controller, Micro and Small Tax in the Edo State office of the Federal Internal Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr. Addingi Iorfam, disclosed in Benin that no fewer than 20 companies operating in the state were owing the federal tax body the sum of N3million as unpaid taxes.

Mr. Iorfam who spoke with newsmen shortly after visiting some of the companies which he said have refused to file their returns and pay taxes, gave the names of some of the defaulting companies to include Kada Cinema Plaza, Edna Table Water, Okpara Electrical Company Limited, Romanian Hotels and Suits among others.

Annual taxes

He said the FIRS would continue to visit defaulting companies to hold meetings with them on the need for them to pay annual taxes as well as the Value Added Tax (VAT) as and when due.

He also said that companies operating in the state would be offered professional advice on taxation in addition to sensitising them on the filings of their returns in order to encourage them.

He advised companies which have registered to do so within six months of operations and also filed in their returns just as he said that the companies visited by his tax operatives were cautioned and given seven days to pay their taxes and file their returns.

In Bayelsa, the agency, which arrested seven offenders raided over ten organisations in collaboration with officers of the Nigeria Police Force that refused to pay their annual tax or fail to remit to the federal government, the Value Added Tax (VAT) collected on its behalf

Speaking to newsmen, the Tax Controller in Bayelsa, Mr. Patrick Iroro, said the exercise was to fish out recalcitrant tax payers, who have not only refused to make returns of their annual trading but have also refused to remit monies collected on behalf of government.”

Well, this is one of the resources government depends on for revenue and we have a lot of recalcitrant tax payers, they do not only refused to make returns of their annual tradings or the ones they collected on behalf of government, but have also refused to remit same. He cited a hotel which after collecting VAT for their services instead of remitting these monies monthly to government withheld same.

“We have written them several letters, we have visited them severally and so we have to ask head office to send us enforcement to help us collect these taxes.

“We have to enforce their compliance, the money they are owing and make them pay, and once they pay, they should start remitting regularly once they pay we let them go,” he said.

Iroro, who said the recent exercise was a warning to tax offenders, warned that any defaulters who refuse to pay will have whatever they owe now doubled as punishment or risk going to prison.

Vanguard