As part of effort to boost performance and improve government revenue, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr Muhammad Nami says the service was targeting a minimum of 5 million dollars staff-to-revenue ratio in the next four years.
Nami who disclosed this on Friday at the 2020 Corporate Plan Retreat of the service in Abuja, said the service was also targeting 10 percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio within the period.
He noted that the service has agreed that in the next four years it will improve its performance on a long term and sustainable basis.
FIRS, according to him, is working towards blocking about 10 billion dollars tax leakages by multinational corporations operating in the country who engaged in illicit profit shifting.
He added that if the country was able to detect and block tax avoidance schemes by multinational corporations, it would be able to improve its tax revenue collection.
“Since I assumed office as chairman, we have revised the organisational structure of the service that reflected management aspiration reviewed and redesigned tax audit and investigations functions and currently we are reviewing all lien cases with a view to closing them and introduce new enforcement strategies.
“In addition, we have initiated several reform projects with a view to reversing our current performance level to a more acceptable level by government,” he said.
Speaking at the retreat, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed said taxation was key to government’s plans to diversify the economy.
Represented by Ms. Fatima Hayyatu, Director Technical Department, Ahmed said that the present administration’s plan to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years could be realised through improved revenue that would be generated by agencies of government like FIRS to develop infrastructure.
