TheCable

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has announced the opening of 25 new satellite tax offices across the country.

This was disclosed in statement issued on Wednesday by Johannes Oluwatobi Wojuola, special assistant on media and communication to Muhammad Nami, FIRS chairman.

The new offices were established to help the FIRS meet its revenue target of N10.1 trillion for 2022.

According to the statement, these new tax offices are part of the agency’s goal to “bring tax services nearer to the taxpaying public while bringing FIRS nearer to the public”.

“These new tax offices would help bring many taxpayers into the tax net, help filling of companies income tax, and value added tax as well as monitor compliance with other taxes,” the statement said.

Speaking at the launch of one of these new offices — the micro and small tax office, Epe, Lagos — Kabir Abba, group lead, general tax operations group at FIRS, said the FIRS management holds these offices as important, and expects them to spearhead tax collection activities in the area.

He said the agency’s chairman had directed staff at these offices to take the assignment very seriously, while working tenaciously towards bringing more taxpayers into the tax net.

Abba further explained that the deployment of technology had made their work easy, as taxpayers could work from the comfort of their offices and homes, register for tax, file returns and pay their taxes in a quick and seamless manner, including applying for their tax clearance certificate.

On his part, Iro Ukpai, chairman of the new satellite tax offices implementation committee, urged the office to reciprocate the confidence entrusted to them by the management by ensuring that they go all out to the field to “bring all the taxpayers who have not been paying their taxes into the tax net”.

Also speaking at the event, Chinedu Adirije, tax controller, FIRS, promised the group lead that the tax office was ready to do its best to bring in all the leaking tax revenues from Epe into the government purse and contribute towards realising the N10.4 trillion target given to the FIRS by the government.