The Senate has approved the sum of N168,809,476,220 to fund the proposed Personnel, Overhead and Capital expenditure cost of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for the 2020 fiscal year.
The approval by the upper legislative chamber followed consideration of a report by the Senate Committee on Finance.
Chairman of the Committee, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola (APC – Lagos West) gave a summary of the 2020 budget for the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the projections in which N1.56 trillion was projected for Oil revenue; N4.502 from Non-Oil revenue.
The projections also had N180.086 billion projected for four per cent cost of Collection; N11.279 billion as projected two per cent Cost of Collection ceded to the Nigeria Customs Service; N168.80 Net projected four per cent Cost of Collection available rose FIRS to be appropriated by NASS; and Value Added Tax (VAT) at 7.5 per cent.
In its adoption of the report, the Senate stressed the importance of a fully digitized system for effective and efficient delivery by the Service.
According to the Senate, digitization of all processes in the administration of tax in FIRS, will bring the Service up-to-speed with rapidly increasing online economic activities that would grow her operations and output to the nation’s economy.
The red chamber also approved a one-off special-purpose intervention fund to the tune of N100 billion for the FIRS.
This was approved to enable the FIRS to complete its head office within 12 months; six (6) Training Schools; 30 Prototype Tax Operations Office; Purpose-built facilities for efficient taxation of Upstream Petroleum Industry and ICT Infrastructure to identify and track digital transactions.