COVID-19: FG Seeks Upfront Tax Payments From Corporations

The Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Muhammad Nami, has called on corporations that are currently experiencing robust transactions to consider paying their annual tax obligations in advance in order to ease pressure on the government, which he says, is facing problem with cash flow.

This was contained in a statement by the FIRS boss which was posted on its twitter handle, @firsNigeria on Saturday.

Nami in the statement had reiterated the need for the companies in the various sectors of the economy not adversely affected by COVID-19 pay their taxes timely.

He said, “I wish to appeal to a section of taxpayers, whose sectors are experiencing boom and significant increase of income at this point in time, for a high level of cooperation in payment of their taxes.

“As for have done in many public fora in recent times, I wish to acknowledge and reiterate my concern on the difficulty businesses are going through at this time of COBID-19 pandemic.”

He said, “You will note that early in the lockdown we put out palliative measures cushion the effects of the economic shocks occasioned by the pandemic on taxpayers.

He said, the economic downturn that resulted from the global shutdown occasioned largely by the COVID-19 pandemic had continued to put pressure on revenue generating agencies including the FIRS, thereby straining government’s bridge budget funding gaps.

Nami said, ‘I wish to specifically make an appeal to corporate bodies in the sectors mentioned above to go the extra mile at this time to cooperate with us in making special arrangements to pay their taxes.

“They may consider, for instance, a situation where they can commence payment of their annual returns earlier than due date apart from that their normal monthly obligations. This has become necessary in order to ease some of the cash flow gaps being experienced by the government at this critical time.”

Such sectors and corporations, he noted, included, Telecommunications, Financial Institutions, e-Commerce, Supermarkets, manufacturers/processors of certain products, among others.