The Senate has approved N168 billion to finance Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) personnel, payroll, and capital spending for 2020.
The approval came after the Senate considered its finance committee ‘s report, presented by the chairman, Solomon Olamilekan (APC, Lagos West).
Mr Adeola in his presentation summarized the FIRS ‘budget performance and gave a review of the planned budget for 2020.
The committee, he said, noted “the FIRS operates below the line account used for tax refund and support for the construction of the head office.”
“The committee also frowned at the unnecessary delay in submitting the budget for 2020. However, the current executive chairman explained that they took over the leadership of FIRS in November/December and the budget for 2020 was not ready as at then. And Covid-19 was also responsible for the delay.”
A breakdown of the approved 2020 budget is as follows:
*N1.56 trillion was projected for Oil revenue;
*N4.502 from Non-Oil revenue;
*N180.086 billion projected for four per cent cost of collection;
*N11.279 billion as projected two per cent Cost of Collection ceded to the Nigeria Customs Service;
*N168.80 Net projected four per cent Cost of Collection available rose FIRS to be appropriated by NASS; and
*Value Added Tax (VAT) at 7.5 per cent.
The Senate consequently called for all procedures of FIRS tax administration to be digitized of order to get the operation up to date with increasingly growing electronic economic activities.
It also accepted a one-off N100 billion special purpose intervention fund to enable the FIRS complete its headquarters within 12 months; six training schools; 30 prototype tax operations office; purpose-built facilities for successful taxation of upstream petroleum industry and ICT technology to recognise and monitor digital transactions.
The lawmakers said the fiscal year budget is expected to end on December 31 , 2020.
It said, henceforth, the budget of the FIRS for any financial year must be approved by the National Assembly “by the end of October of a preceding year – to ensure strict compliance with the January to December financial year.”
