VENTURES AFRICA – Nigeria’s
Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) said on Friday that it recovered
N333 million ($2.03 million) from corporate tax payers in the Oil and
Gas sector during its two-day tax recovery drive in the commercial city
of Lagos, reported the News Agency of Nigeria.
The exercise covered companies such as Baker Hughes, Line Trale,
Techno Oil and Heyden Petroleum, all operating in the oil and gas
industry.The Agency report said the tax authorities got N50 million ($304,414) payment commitments from Baker Hughes and Techno Oil and a 15 million ($91,324) payment commitment from Heyden Petroleum. It added that among two other companies, whose names it did not give, one made a payment of 148 million ($901,065)while the
other made a documented promise to pay N70 million ($426,179) after the holiday period.
Nigeria continues to suffer large scale corporate tax evasion which the governments laments denies it much needed revenue and which the FIRS has been trying to stem. however the success of tax authorities have often been limited to “settling over the counter” with companies because of administrative and legal bottlenecks that mitigate their enforcement of tax laws.
Evasion of companies often leads tax authorities to venture into the street in order to compulse companies to pay their taxes.
Olaitan Adediran, the Director of FIRS Tax Department was quoted as saying that the latest enforcement drive of the agency yielded positive responses as it succeeded in making companies sign payment agreements, but lamented that such exercise would be needless if companies complied to pay their taxes as at when due.
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