By Clem Khena-Ogbena
The Acting Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Alh Kabir Mashi, yesterday disclosed that the Federal Government earned N4.8tn from tax collections in the 2013 fiscal year.
Mashi gave the figure during the opening ceremony of an enlargement management meeting of the service.
He said the collection of N4.80tn was a huge improvement of N337bn or 7.56 per cent over the N4.46tn earned in 2013.
He, however, lamented that the amount generated in 2013 was below the N5.80tn target of the FIRS by 17.18 per cent.
He said while the service had performed well in areas of tax collections within the last few years, there was the need to improve revenue collections particularly in the area of non-oil tax collections.
This, he stated, had necessitated the service to take steps in growing the non-oil tax revenue through the takeoff of the Capacity Enhancement Program.
This, he added, would help to deliver an additional $500m (N80bn) in non-oil revenue in the current year.
He said, “It is necessary to improve upon non-oil tax collection for a number of reasons major among which is the increasing global need to reduce the over dependence on oil revenue.
“The service had no doubt done well in the last couple of years.
However, there is still a great need for improvement. FIRS surpassed its revenue target for 2013, collecting N4.805tn as against the target of N4.468tn.
“We surpassed the target by N337bn or 7.56 per cent but our performance was below the FIRS target of N5.803tn by 17.18 per cent. “A closer review of the figures for our non-oil collection reveals the actual collection of N2.139tn which falls short of the government target of N2.188tn by about three per cent.”
