The Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, has placed their revenue projection for 2021at N5.9 trillion.

FIRS Chairman Mohammed Nami, made this disclosure in a meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Finance on the Service’s 2021 budget defence and consideration of its proposed Revenue and Expenditure Estimates.

Nami said, out of the proposed figure, non-oil is proposed to generate N4.26 trillion while oil components are expected to generate N1.64 trillion.

Also, the cost of collecting the projected revenue at N289.25 billion against the budgeted N180.76 billion in 2020 to fund the three operational expenditure heads for the year.

“Out of the proposed expenditure of N289.25 billion across the three expenditure heads, the sum of N147.08 billion and N94.97 billion are to be expended on Personnel and Overhead Costs against 2020 budgeted sum of N97.36 billion and N43.64 billion respectively. Also, the sum of N47.19 billion is estimated to be expended on capital items against the budgeted sum of N27.80 billion in 2020. The sum is to cater for on-going and new projects for effective revenue drive”.

Nami, however stressed that the agency failed to realize the expected N5 trillion it targeted in 2020 due to the the lockdown occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic and the #endSARS protest affected the drive for taxes.

FIRS revenue in last five year

FIRS said its total tax revenue in the year 2020 amounted to N4,952,243,711,728.37 (N4.9trillion).

The service explained that the landmark achievement represents approximately 98% of the national tax target of N5.076 trillion set for the FIRS by the federal government.

In 2019, the total revenue of the service fell below target, as a total of N5 trillion was generated while 5.32 trillions generated in 2018.

However, N4 trillion was generated from tax revenue collected in 2017. This represents a 20 percent or N800 billion increase when compared with N3.3 trillion generated in 2016.