Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Babatunde Fowler, has redeployed 26 directors and introduced State Coordinator structure in the FIRS.
In the recent posting, the Director of FCT and North Central Region, Olufemi Faniyi, was posted to the Compliance Support Group, while Innocent Ohagwa, Director, South-South and South-East Directorate Department is now Acting State Coordinator, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Cross River States. Gbolaga Oshiga, Director, Lagos Mainland (East and West Directorate) Department is now Acting State Coordinator, Ogun, Oyo and Osun States. Mohammed Magam, Director, North-West and North-East Regions Directorate Department becomes the Acting State Coordinator, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara States while Olufunlola Adediran, Director, Oil and Gas Department, Lagos, was transferred to the Office of the Coordinating Director, Domestic Tax Group in Abuja.
Each of the 13 State Coordinators will supervise operations in their areas of jurisdictions. Two directors were moved to the headquarters in Abuja. Three will coordinate affairs in the states. Experienced deputy directors were transferred to FIRS’ Training School and centres across the country as part of the efforts of the Service to strengthen its knowledge transfer programme and expeditious development of the capacity of its workforce in the interim.
In a statement, FIRS said the State structure was part of the new FIRS Chairman’s vision of minimizing the span of control, closer focus on corporate taxpayers in all states of the federation and stronger collaboration with State Boards of Internal Revenue, SBIR, to increase overall tax yield accruable to the three tiers of government.
Under a new campaign to widen the tax base, FIRS registered additional 359,158 corporate taxpayers in 107 days (13th October 2015 to 27th January 2016.
Also, FIRS chairman plans to add at least 500,000 new corporate taxpayers by 31st March 2016.
Working with states under the Joint Tax Board, JTB, structure, the FIRS Chairman plans to widen the tax base further by adding five million new individual taxpayers to the country-wide tax register, by December 2016.
