Presidential panel, FIRS partner on recovery of tax revenues

The Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP) is to panel with the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), to recover tax revenues from companies who hitherto have been evading payment.

Ms Lucie-Ann Laha, the panel spokesperson in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday, said that the Panel Chairman, Mr Okoi Obono-Obla, made this known when he received Mr Tunde Fowler, the FIRS Chairman on a visit.

Obono-Obla urged the FIRS to work with the panel to recover taxes and royalties owed the Federal Government by several oil companies amounting to billions of dollars.

He informed Fowler that the panel had uncovered about 1, 500 properties in Dubai, UAE, owned by Nigerians for which due taxes were not being paid to the Nigerian government.

The FIRS Chairman confirmed that both agencies had indeed been working together in the past.

Fowler said that the deployment of ICT to the FIRS operations had among other things, reinforced internal controls which also helped to reduce fraud and bottlenecks in tax administration.
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