The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has disclosed that it generated N12.37 trillion from taxes in 2023, exceeding its revenue target for the year by N816 billion.
The amount reflects a 107 per cent performance over the set goal.
The agency had proposed a revenue target of N11.56 trillion for the outgone year.
Coordinating Director of Special Tax Operations Group at the FIRS, Amina Ado, gave the details in a presentation on Wednesday.
Further details of the presentation showed that the FIRS also exceeded its 2022 revenue of N10.18 trillion by 21.7 per cent, showing a consistent growth pattern since 2019, with the exception being 2020, which was impacted by COVID 19.
A further breakdown showed that Company Income tax (CIT) attributed for 36.14 per cent of the total taxes collected in 2023, making it the most collected tax for the year, followed by Value Added Tax (VAT) of N3.64 trillion and Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) of N3.17 trillion.
The FIRS said the target for 2024 was N19.41 trillion, an increase of 56.91 per cent from the previous year’s actual and 67.91 per cent from the previous year’s target, with a chunk of the taxes expected to come from the oil sector.
Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja at the 2024 strategic management retreat of FIRS, Executive Chairman, Zacch Adedeji, said the target was achievable with the series of reforms being implemented by the Service.
According to him, the focus was to drive for long-term compliance.
“And in a few minutes now, by those rules, we have the new structure that we have. And what we’ve done in general is to move from functional or type of taxi units to customer-centred.
“And we want to use that to drive compliance because the focus cannot be on investigation. The real strategy is to drive compliance and the way to do it is that there will always be consequences for no compliance.
“So, our focus is not to go and tax the informal sector. Our focus is actually to bring the informal sector to the sector. The focus should not be let’s go and tax informal. The focus should be to move the informal sector to the formal sector, improve their skill and then we can then tax them,” he explained.
Adedeji added that the new operational structure that is being established at the agency will eliminate confusion and redundancy in tax administration in Nigeria.
