The Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mr. Babatunde Fowler, on Friday said there are currently about 27million Nigerians who are not paying taxes.
Fowler said this in an interview with State House correspondents.
He said the level of compliance in individual tax payment was too low.
He said, “In terms of individuals, it is still very low. I was at a meeting with the chairman of the SMEs and rightly so he said that he employed close to 34 million individuals in that business.
“And as you know, the SMEs are very important when it comes to economic growth; they provide employment, they also provide products that all of us use from toothpicks to matches and all that.
“But the irony of that is that if they have 34 million or 35 million members, on our national tax data base you have less than seven million individuals.
“So, the issue here is that we have close to 27million individuals who are not registered, who are not paying their taxes.”
Fowler also said the FIRS has started a new enrolment to capture no fewer than 500,000 new corporate accounts in the tax data base by the first quarter of 2016.
He said about 105,000 new accounts had been captured in the past 45 days.
“There is a big gap both in terms of the individuals and also the corporate compliance.
“On the corporate side, we expect we are going to register at least half a million new corporate accounts by March 31.
“We have started the campaign and in the last 45 days we have registered about 105,000 corporate accounts that have not been paying tax.
“So I think it is time that we all put hands together and try and make sure that we support ourselves in supporting the government so that the government has the required revenue.
“So the government can provide the services and the required infrastructure to make Nigeria the Nigeria of our dreams,” he added.
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