Fiscal commission uncovers N115 billion tax liabilities against FG, states’ MDAs

The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC)) says it has uncovered over N115 billion being tax liabilities established against some federal and states’ Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as local councils.

RMAFC’s Spokesperson, Ibrahim Mohammed, who confirmed this in a statement yesterday, said the commission was able to establish the amount as tax liabilities in the first phase of the exercise covering the period between 2005 and 2015 in the 30 states of the federation where the exercise had been carried out.

He said that at the end of the exercise, which is 90 per cent completed, an additional N40 billion is expected to be uncovered during the last lap covering Bauchi, Cross River, Edo, Enugu and Rivers states.

However, Adamawa, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Katsina and Kebbi states have been given a clean bill of health as they are bereft of any tax liabilities.The statement added that all the states, local councils and other agencies indicted so far had indicated their willingness to pay up their indebtedness and had passionately pleaded for waiver of penalty and interest totalling N24 million comprising N9.748 million as penalty and N14.281 million as interest respectively.

Meanwhile, in the course of the exercise, it was discovered that some Federal Government agencies domiciled in the states were not remitting Pay As You Earn (PAYE) to the state governments thus depleting their internally-generated revenue (IGR) base.

In another development, RMAFC has called on the Federal Government to reimburse some of the state governments that executed Federal Government projects in their states to enhance their revenue profile.

The Federal Inland Revenue Service had in 2011 announced that unremitted tax liabilities by government agencies across the three tiers of governments in the country exceeded N170 billion and subsequently set in motion a machinery to recover the said sum for the Federation Account.

The action led to the arrest and detention of some key officials of the agencies, including the former Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority, Mr. Adamu Ismaila, over N28.2 billion unremitted taxes.

The amount was made up of taxes collected by the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on behalf of the FIRS since 2006 till then, which had not been remitted to the Federation Account.

The action, according to the FIRS, contravened the provisions of sections 26 and 27 of its Establishment Act leaving it with no option than to invoke the provisions of sections 29, 30 and 33 of the same Act.