The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) yesterday, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the exchange of information and implementation of joint tax audit and investigation exercise.
The agreement signing ceremony held at the Lagos State House, Marina, was witnessed by Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, minister of state, Budget and National Planning, Mr Clement Agba, FIRS and LIRS coordinating directors, as well as some of the Lagos state exco members which included the state Commissioner for Finance, Dr Rabiu Olowo Onaolapo and the state Attorney-General & Commissioner for Justice, Mr Moyosore Onigbanjo.
While the executive chairman, LIRS, Mr Ayodele Subair signed on behalf of Lagos State, his counterpart, Muhammad Mamman Nami, executive chairman, FIRS signed on behalf of the federal government.
Speaking at the signing event, Mr Ayodele Subair, executive chairman, LIRS, in his remarks, said the importance of the agreement was to foster greater collaboration between the two agencies.
He said though both tax agencies are not only independent of each other but different in the types of taxes they administer, the collaboration between the tax authorities was to promote the smooth operation of activities not only for the benefit of tax authorities but for improved service delivery for taxpayers.
In his own remarks, FIRS EC, Muhammad Mamman Nami, said the essence of the collaboration between the FIRS and LIRS was to enable the two agencies to carry out joint projects together, secondly, in the course of its investigations, they both work as a team while the third and most important reason was to ensure automatic exchange of information which would enable the agency get a bigger data for seamless tax administration.
