Unfruitful Servant: FIRS To Spend Over N300 Billion On Expenditures In 2024, With Zero Remittance To Federal Government

Secrets Reporters

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has proposed a budget expenditure of N356,951,441,648 for 2024 with no remittance to the Federal Government of Nigeria.

This was contained in the 48 Government Owned Enterprises (GOE) budget document. These enterprises are wholly owned by the government and are involved in commercial activities. They are also called super agencies due to the money they provide for the Federal government.

The FIRS proposed budget breakdown revealed that N356,951,441,648 will be the 2024 generated revenue. The bug of the money will be gotten from Company Income Tax 4% Cost of Collection (Non-Oil) amounting to N161,806,763,218, followed by Value Added Tax Non-Import VAT amounting to N128,474,814,944, Company Income Tax 4% Cost of Collection (Oil and Gas) will generate N22,914,571,673.10. In contrast, N15, 119, 159, and 564.40 will be obtained from Nigeria Customs Service Import VAT.

The expenditure breakdown for the agency revealed a whooping sum of N7,472,567,634. Was budgeted for utilities – general, local, and international training to gulp N10,200,415,000.00; miscellaneous expenditure for the agency was set at N23,515,657,133.00.

A further breakdown of the miscellaneous expenditure revealed that N13,617,615,408.00 would be going for welfare packages, refreshment/meals, and honorarium/sitting allowance was set at N495,000,000.00 and N450,000,000.00 respectively, budget for sporting activities was set at N498,330,000.00, monitoring activities and follow up was set at N1,903,500,000.00.

In addition, the supplementary overhead was set at nN1,440,000,000.00, with long service award gulping N11,070,000,000.00, board sitting/directors allowance was set at N1,200,000,000.00, management/staff/board retreat was set at N3,690,000,000.00, and capital expenditure was set at N63,158,272,255.10.

The document shows that the total of N356,951,441,648 proposed to be generated by the organization for 2024 was also approved as their expenditure, with no remittance to the federal government.

Recall that the 2024 appropriation bill was passed by the National Assembly on December 30 2023, while increasing the budget to 28.7 trillion Naira as against the earlier proposed amount by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Notably, the FIRS (Federal Inland Revenue Service) is tasked with evaluating, collecting, and managing tax and other revenues allocated to the Federal Government of Nigeria. Established in 1943, its duties were previously carried out by the Inland Revenue Department of British West Africa.

The Board of Inland Revenue was formed in 1958, and the FIRS attained autonomy following the enactment of the FIRS (Establishment) Act 13 of 2007.