As often suspected and speculated by analysts, big multi-nationals have been robbing Nigeria blind, the chief tax man and Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mallam Mohammed Nami has confirmed in Abuja.
He told participants at a workshop that though there were a few good and respectable multi-national corporate citizens, a bulk were tax thieves.
And to stem the illicit financial flow out of Nigeria and improve tax compliance rate in the country, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has created 35 additional Tax Audit Units in the country last year.
Nami, on Monday, in his opening remarks at a \u201cWorkshop on Effective Audit of Multinational Corporations for Domestic Revenue Mobilisation in Nigeria,\u201d organised by the Service in junction with the Tax Justice Network, observed that some multinational corporations were \u201cleading in tax compliance in various sectors” but expressed worries that “many rich Multinational Corporations do not pay the right taxes due from them, let alone pay their taxes voluntarily.\u201d
Charging the workshop to come up with \u201ca novel methodology that would be used to uncover illicit financial flows\u201d and \u201cprovide an overview of related policy options for enhancing tax revenue collection in general,\u201d Mr. Nami also disclosed that \u201cbetween 2007 and 2017\u201d Nigeria was \u201creported to have lost over US$178 billion (about N5.4 trillion at today\u2019s rate) through tax evasion by Multinationals\u201d doing business in the country.
He also cited a 2014 report by the High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, which stated that \u201cNigeria accounted for 30.5% of money lost by the continent through illicit financial flows.\u201d
His words: \u201cAt the FIRS we are paying greater attention to tax audit in general and Transfer Pricing audit in particular in order to improve the level of tax compliance in the country. As a result, in the last one year, we have created more than 35 additional Tax Audit Units and deployed experienced and capable staff to take charge of these offices.\u201d
He further stated that with signing of the 2021 budget of N13.588 trillion on 31st December, 2020 by President Muhammadu Buhari and given the recent decline of oil resources, “which had been the major revenue earner for the country, taxation is expected to continue to shoulder the Government\u2019s Budget performance the way it did in 2020. This underscores the importance of this workshop, as tax audit of Multinational Corporations is very crucial in Nigeria\u2019s domestic revenue mobilisation.
\u201cFor me, this Workshop is an important step towards boosting compliance level; and, I have strong hopes that its outcome will further increase our efforts at driving tax compliance among Multinational Corporations in Nigeria.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As often suspected and speculated by analysts, big multi-nationals have been robbing Nigeria blind, the chief tax man and Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mallam Mohammed Nami has confirmed in Abuja. He told participants at a workshop that though there were a few good and respectable multi-national corporate citizens, a bulk were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":14404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[125,2754,375],"class_list":["post-30609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-firs","tag-multi-nationals","tag-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}