The Federal Inland Revenue Service said a total of 23,141 defaulters owe N254bn in tax liabilities.
Chairman,of the service, Babatunde Fowler made this known at the 49th Annual Accountant Conference organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria in Abuja.
The FIRS in collaboration with the banks has started engaging in compliance measures with regard to the tax defaulters and their accounts.
So far, the service has recovered over N97.7bn from tax defaulters since it gave the directive to banks. Further sanctions would begin with delisting defaulting banks from the FIRS collection list.
The banks as tax collecting agents were directed to make specific deductions from alleged tax defaulters’ accounts and pay such over to the FIRS in full or partial payment of the alleged tax debt.
The chairman said that before the FIRS took such harsh stance, it had undertaken tax amnesty programmes such as the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme without much success.
