Tax Evasion: Lagos Recovers N32bn

Lagos State government says it has recovered N32 billion from companies that had been evading tax payment to the state.

Chairman, Lagos Inland Revenue Service (LIRS), Mr Tunde Fowler stated at a recent stakeholders’ meeting on taxation in Lagos that N17 billion was recovered from 200 companies between January and December, 2009.

He said N15 billion was recovered from tax evaders last year in the current move to collect taxes from unscrupulous companies that either fail to pay their tax to government or remit the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) deduction from their workers pay to government.

Similarly, Governor Babatunde Kaji Fashola has vowed that the state government would fight through all legal means to ensure that the five per cent consumption tax it imposed on eateries, event centres and others becomes reality.

Some centres and other businesses had taken the state government to court and got an injunction stopping the government from collecting five per cent consumption tax, pending the determination of the substantive suit.

But the government, Fashola said, will continue to collect taxes from eateries and others that had already complied.

At the stakeholders’ meeting, Fashola said “we will fight this to a logical conclusion,” adding that government imposed the tax for the benefit of the public.

He lashed out at the Federal Government for supporting the hoteliers and others which had taken the state government to court.

The governor said he does not know why a federal government organ would intervene in a law duly passed by the State House of Assembly.

Fashola emphasised that the consumption tax would not affect the hoteliers but the people doing business with them as they would bear the brunt.