• Goes After Tax Evaders, Recruits 2,190 Officers
• Says No Extension Of March 2018 Deadline
• 500 High Net Worth Persons To Start Getting Letters Monday

Caption: Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, addressing lawyers, accountants and other professional advisers during the workshop organised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Inland Revenue Service and Joint Tax Board for the advisers on Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS), on Friday, November 24, 2017, in Lagos.

Obviously not wanting to be caught unawares by tax evaders who are determined not to take advantage of the March 31, 2018 deadline window offered under its Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS), the Federal Government at the weekend gave a sense of the level of revenue leakages that has left the nation’s tax revenue to GDP at an abysmal 6%, far less than the African average of 17%, helped by its ongoing profiling of personal income tax, property and company ownership.
According to Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, during a review of property and company ownership as well as registration of high value assets and foreign exchange allocations, “we found major non-compliance.
“In some cases, people declared as little as N10 million as income but purchased expensive property overseas and in Nigeria, registered high specification vehicles and funded luxurious personal events costing multiples of the declared income.
According to Adeosun, who spoke while declaring open a workshop organised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Inland Revenue Service and Joint Tax Board for lawyers, accountants and other professionals advising clients on participation in the VAIDS at the weekend in Lagos, the profiling has given a sense of the lifestyles of the high net worth persons.
A statement by Oluyinka Akintunde, Special Adviser, Media & Communications to the Finance Minister, quoted Adeosun as lamenting the result of data mining exercise is worrisome, showing that even government contractors who have received major payments in the past five years have been under declaring their tax liabilities.
“We have blocked a major loophole by using data to profile tax payers. Thus, someone owning properties across multiple states and overseas can selectively declare knowing that tax authority had no means of cross checking.
“This is especially the case with overseas assets and income where State Governments lacked jurisdiction. But with the centralisation of data under Project Lighthouse within the Federal Ministry of Finance, a major loophole has been plugged,” she added.
Reiterating the Federal Government’s willingness to prosecute tax evaders after the tax amnesty period had elapsed, the Minister added that tax compliance teams have looked at import records and compared the value of goods imported to the tax declarations of the importers, but the discovery was worrisome as “the variance was disturbingly wide”.
She told participants at the workshop that there was no hiding place for tax evaders residing in Nigeria or abroad, as the Federal Government had put in place a data mining mechanism to fish out evaders and that government has recruited and trained 2,190 Community Tax Liaison Officers (CTLOs) 1,710 of who have been deployed to 33 States.
The CTLOs are currently operating in Adamawa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara, Lagos, Nassarawa, Niger, Ogun and Oyo, among others, to raise awareness about the scheme and taxation in general.
Adeosun assured that “the unique cooperation between the various arms of Federal Government, State Governments and Foreign Governments has provided an unprecedented level of data that allows the Nigerian Government to profile taxpayers accurately and identify those whose lifestyle and assets are not consistent with their declared income.
She therefore called on professionals to advise their clients to uphold honesty in the declaration of their assets and income as well as the regularisation of their tax status.
Those on the list of 500 prominent Nigerians with property and trusts abroad to determine their tax compliance status at home, she stressed will start receive their letters from Monday, November 27, 2017, asking them to take advantage of the tax amnesty to regularise their tax status and avoid prosecution and fines.
“Receiving the letter is not an accusation of deliberate wrongdoing but rather a notice that the data suggests possible underpayment and a prompt to check compliance.
“It is premature to call such persons tax evaders as there are many reasons that taxpayers may have failed to comply. We will only label people as real tax evaders when the amnesty deadline expires and they have failed to regularize. Such persons can then legitimately be called tax evaders, as their non-participation in VAIDs indicates that they are willful tax evaders. We will then proceed to apply the full weight of the law.
“We are sending out thousands of letters to those in the high risk categories but our advice is that every person and every company should do a self-assessment and take advantage of VAIDs to correct any under declaration, irrespective of whether they get a letter,” she added.