FIRS to audit NNPC, MDAs and Banks.

      In a bid of ensuring that all tax revenues due to the government are collected and remitted into the Federation Account, The Federal Inland Revenue Service, has began a tax audit of Ministries,department & agencies.

     FIRS Chairman, Mr. Babatunde Fowler said FIRS received the go-ahead from the Minister of Finance to to commence a joint audit on all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the government.He said the need for the joint audit arose owing to the fact that the arrangement where government agencies were to deduct Withholding Tax and Value Added Tax from contractors and remit same to the Federation Account had not yielded the desired results.

    Mr Fowler said, “We have an audit process that we are carrying out with the collecting banks to ensure that revenues received have been swept into our account at the close of 2015; we are about to start another audit process to ensure that remittance still held by other banks have been swept.
“We also wrote to them in September that if there was any amount unapplied, because sometimes taxpayers pay and quote the wrong account number and it goes into a suspense account; we have told them to remit any amount unapplied that belongs to the Federal Government directly to our account. And during the audit process, we will also verify that that has been done.”