The Federal Capital Territory Internal Revenue Services (FCT-IRS) has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to assist it in tackling tax liability of suspects being investigated for any form of economic and financial crime and other acts of corruption.
This appeal was made in Abuja on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 when the management team of FCT-IRS, led by its Acting Executive Chairman, Michael Ango came on a courtesy visit to the Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede at the EFCC’s corporate headquarters
Ango specifically stated that the FCT-IRS would need EFCC’s help in the areas of facilitation of collection of personal income tax from owners of properties forfeited to the federal government; involvement of FCT-IRS in ascertaining the tax status of individuals and entities under the Commission’s investigation and lastly in tracing of high net worth individuals and bringing them under the FCT tax net.
“One of the things I want to explore, Mr. Chairman is to say that whenever you have obtained a forfeiture order, we want to find out if it is possible to say ‘FCT-IRS come and tell us the compliance status of this person or this company if they have paid or not. And I am talking of personal income tax. If an individual is forfeiting X amount to the federal government, Mr. Chairman, we want to assess such a person on tax and ensure that he or she has paid taxes before the rest of it is forfeited to the federal government. Likewise for corporate entities to know if they have personal income tax obligations which they are not discharged.
“The second aspect is that even when suspects are investigated, whether they are charged to court or not, we are interested in knowing their compliance status because if the person was not found culpable for the actual offence that he or she was arrested for, it is possible that such a person may not have paid his taxes. So if he escapes from one door, we want to make sure that we can catch him or her through the second door, which is tax compliance.
“The third issue which we have done significantly well with NFIU, is the issue of HNIs (High Net worth Individuals).
Mr. Chairman may recall that in September 2024 or so, we made an announcement that we had created the Office of the High Networth Individuals in the FCT-IRS. It was the first of its kind and we pegged the income tax for HNIs in Abuja at N25 million per annum. The reason why we did that was that we wanted to ensure that we caught or captured a large base. Subsequently, as we have more people in the base, we will
increase the threshold. I want to say that we have received significant support from NFIU. We already have an MOU with them and we’re working with them, but if there is any additional support that we can get from EFCC, we will be more than happy to get that. The whole idea is that we believe that if Nigeria is going to develop, then the elite, those who are the top of the society, should pay their fair share of taxes”.
Olukoyede who expressed joy at the FCT tax authority’s desire for collaboration with the EFCC applauded Ango for the new drive he brought into his job and assured him that he has found the right partner in EFCC.
“We have seen your drive in your agency, the increase in your revenue generation for the FCT. Without money, the capital projects we are seeing all over the place would not be made possible. So we want to encourage you to do more. I bet that you have found the right partner in us to work with you. In the last quarter of last year, we were able to remit between N1.2 and N1.7 billion to the FCT, being part of the revenue that we helped you to generate.
The EFCC’s boss also responded positively to the other areas of FCT-IRS requests for collaboration. “You spoke about the issue of assessment of tax liability of suspects. We will be willing to do that with you. We have a very functional tax and revenue section. As a matter of fact, it is like a special unit. So we will also like to extend the hand of collaboration to you. Assets are being forfeited and some of their owners are owing, even tenement and other types of taxes that relate to the ownership of such assets. We may not know, ours is to just to trace those assets and attach them as the case may be. So if there are any areas of tax liability, you will have to come forward with your assessment. We will be able to work with you and also make them pay such liabilities. I believe that is how practical we can work together in that area.
“Yes, most of our high profile suspects are high networth people under your categorization of high networth. When we make such arrests, just write a letter to us that you wish to look at the tax liability of such a high net worth person. We have quite a number of them in ongoing cases, so you don’t even have to wait for fresh ones. So maybe you just write us a letter and let’s look at it and see. I am not sure we have any existing MoU with your agency. Probably we have to do that so that we can strengthen the collaboration between your agency and our agency and define our scope of collaboration and synergy as relates to our investigation and also your mandate.
“I want to assure you of our open arms and our willingness to collaborate with you to ensure that the mandates of our agencies are realized.