The current economic team set up by President Goodluck has a tall mandate to device means of cutting wastage’s across all sectors of the economy and boost government revenue.

To achieve this, all revenue generating agencies of government have been tasked to increase their contributions to the central purse, just as the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has assured that the issue of ghost workers in the civil service would receive immediate attention as a step towards plugging the leakages in the service.

It is in light of the above that the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has warned private companies and agencies of government to remit their taxes or face the full wrath of the law.

Only recently, the mass media were awash with news report of arrest of some government officials that had refused to remit taxes due the revenue agency.

The Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) and other officials of the agency were  picked by operatives of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for failing to remit taxes totaling N28 billion.

According to the report, the FCDA was said to have been withholding the remittances of the amount to the FIRS since 2006.

“Operatives of the FIRS stormed the office of the executive secretary, Adamu Ismaila, at Area 11 and after failing to show proof that the money had been paid, he was whisked away to the Intelligence, Investigation and Enforcement Department of the FIRS at Wuse2.

“Ismaila appealed to the FIRS operatives to come back later that day to get additional information, but his plea fell on deaf ears.

He told the FIRS operatives that he had ‘just assumed duty about three weeks before that day while denying seeing any letter from the FIRS.

“I have not seen it, but my director of finance and administration came with a copy of this letter and told me it’s about remittance of taxes to the FIRS. And she told me that they did reconciliation with your staff in her office and everything was okay but that the only thing was the remittance point and that she had presented this matter to the treasury for them to ensure that they made this remittance,” he was quoted as saying.

However,  Ismaila, in his defence stated: “The FCDA does not operate all our accounts, even our payments are made by the treasury department for our contracts and even our salary and tax deductions. We have a central account in FCT, which is operated by the treasury department under the FCT minister’s office. In fact, all the MDAs, FCDA, secretariat, water board and the rest are all operated by the treasury.”

But, Mr Ajayi Bamidele, who led the  FIRS team informed that  “this money is not your tax, but money you deducted on behalf of FIRS, if it is something you are collecting on behalf of somebody just to give it over, then I do not see any reason this should not be done and this is something that has started since 2006 to date. All efforts we have made to recover this money has not worked, therefore, this is the only option we are left with.”

Ismaila was whisked away by the FIRS squad, the report said.

Such courageous step by the tax  agency is a warning to others who think they are immune to similar action. Not even their status in the society can stop FIRS from doing its job,moreso at a time the Federal Government is aggressively driving its reform programmes.