Business
KEMI Adeosun, minister of finance, is to increase in the number of taxpayers in the next two years from the current 14 million to 17 million.
Adeosun stated this at a media briefing on Thursday in Abuja on a new initiative to drive tax revenue.
Adeosun, who was accompanied to the briefing by Babatunde Fowler, executive chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, and other top officials in the ministry, said the federal government will achieve the objective by recruiting 7,500 graduates as community tax liaison officers to raise the level of tax awareness in the country.
She said the graduates would be recruited under the N-Power programme of the federal government for a two-year period, adding that graduates with accounting, economics and similar backgrounds would be given priority during the recruitment process.
The major responsibilities of those employed under the programme will be to enlighten people in public places such as markets, schools, religious centres, offices and recreational centres, among others, on the need to pay taxes.
She said those employed under the scheme would be paid N30,000 monthly, but added that they would receive performance-based incentives to be measured by the number of people that gets enrolled during the two-year period.
Fowler stressed that tax evasion was a punishable offence in the country, stressing that the Tax Appeal Tribunal was being reconstituted and stated that tax evaders would be prosecuted.
– June 16, 2017 @ 7:38 GMT /
Tags: Babatunde Fowler chairman FIRS Community Tax Liaison Officers Kemi Adeosun minister of finance N-Power programme Tax Appeal Tribunal
