The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), as part of its plan to increase its workforce, has disclosed that it will be recruiting 1,250 persons across Nigeria as soon as the service receives its budget from President Buhari.

Mr. Babatunde Fowler, the executive director of FIRS, while disclosing this yesterday during his appearance before the Senate committee on Finance at the National Assembly, said:

“Basically what we are discussing is 2016 budget and within the budget, we do have provision for recruitment of staff in terms of staff expansion; and in total we are expected to recruit about 1,250 and we have not started and that process will start once the budget have been approved,” Mr Fowler said.

While giving his statement, Mr Flow lamented the non-payment of tax by Nigerians, saying only 10% of the country’s citizens pay their dues.

“We were in Kano earlier this week and the Emir spoke to all Muslims that payment of tax that is not against Islam. But we have people in different languages with different ideas and as a tax body we have to make sure that we can educate everyone,” the tax official said.

“We have running jingles in all major languages in Igbo, Yoruba Hausa, Pidgin English and once we sensitise the public and you understand what needs to be done, then you can start enforcement or start expecting people to pay tax; that is the media campaign.”

Mr Folwer went on to call on the House of Assembly to help the FIRS meet its targets, saying the service needs all the help it can get at less than 10% of VAT is remitted back to the state.

“If those people who are benefiting from Nigeria and actually have love for Nigeria, they can do the right thing by paying their taxes because in paying taxes, you are empowering government to provide service,” Mr Fowler said.

“We intend to make sure that we get at least a 90% compliance over the last few months we have added over 362,000 new tax payers and then our job is just to make sure that we enforce payment.”

http://www.ogbongefriends.com/breakingNews/newsDetails/10002/FIRS-TO-RECRUIT-NEW-TAX-COLLECTORS

Do you also know that only 10% of our politicians fulfill there electioneering campaign promises?