Presidency, National Assembly, EFCC fail to pay taxes to FIRS

The Nigerian Presidency, both chambers of the National Assembly, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) are some of the defaulters who failed to remit taxes to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in 2016.

This is according to the the annual report of the Auditor-General of the Federation on the accounts of the Federation of Nigeria "for the year ended December 31, 2016."

The unremitted taxes covered pay as you earn (PAYE), value added tax (VAT) and withholding tax (WHT) which the affected agencies were yet to account for as of June 2017.

According to the report, obtained by Pulse Nigeria, the State House operations (President) failed to remit the sum of N10,500,471.26 while the State House operations (Vice President) failed to remit N7,497,570.93. The State House Headquarters failed to remit a total of N253,194,782.74 in the period under review.

During the audit of the Senate Accounts it was observed that personal advances totalling N747,286,680.00 granted to staff between February and December 2016 for various procurements and services, were not retired, signalling poor control in the management and accountability of public funds.

WHT and VAT, totalling N118,625,057.48, which were purportedly remitted to the FIRS were not acknowledged with revenue receipts.

Payment vouchers for amounts totalling N109,007,179.73 paid from the Capital Expenditure vote, were also not presented for audit examination by the Senate.

The Clerk to the National Assembly was requested to produce relevant documents of remittance to the appropriate quarters.

The report also noted that PAYE deductions from staff salaries of the federal House of Representatives totalling N821,564,296.48 were claimed to have been remitted but without receipts for the remittances produced for audit verification.

The Clerk of the National Assembly was instructed to produce the receipts confirming the remittance of the sum in question to the FIRS for verification.

Advances granted to officers of the House of Representatives totalling N254,059,513.70 for procurement of goods and services between January and December 2016 were also unretired.

Over 100 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) were also found to be defaulters in the 2016 report, with hospitals, polytechnics and universities also named.

The anti-graft agency, EFCC, failed to remit the sum of 25,346,123.61 while others such as the National Emergency Management Agency (308,823,408.67), Code of Conduct Tribunal (34,503,512.55), and Nigerian Television Authority (897,703.72), also made the list alongside hundreds of other defaulters.

In the audit report signed by the AGF, Anthony Ayine, he noted that the extensive violation of statutory financial reporting obligations by parastatals is of great concern. The audit report was submitted to the Clerk of the National Assembly, Mohammed Sani-Omolori, on May 31, 2018.