Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Babatunde Fowler, has said that Nigeria loses about $15 billion to tax evasion annually.
He stated this on Wednesday in Abuja while declaring open a three-day seminar by the West Africa Tax Administration Forum (WATAF) on exchange of information as a tool to combat offshore tax evasion, especially among ECOWAS countries.
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“Nigeria loses about $14 billion annually if you look at the major economies, especially those in the extractive industry, South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria.
“They form bulk of the transactions, so one can safely assume that Nigeria may be losing between 14 billion dollars to 15 billion dollars annually to tax evasion,” Fowler said.
He noted that the increasing mobility of income and assets had created a major challenge for tax administrators in the sub-region.
This, he said, was especially so because several information leaks released in the past years had unveiled the depth and breadth of the challenge.
According to him, this shows that vast amount of money is being kept offshore and therefore, can go untaxed.
He, however, said that governments around the world were joining efforts to address the challenge.
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Fowler said Nigeria on its part had demonstrated commitment to improving transparency around tax matters with the signing of a declaration as well as joining the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCCA) on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in 2017.
The seminar is being attended by tax administrators from Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cote Divoire, Mali, and Guinea.
