The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has said it will spend N160 million to sew uniforms for its 850 drivers.
Babatunde Fowler, chairman of the agency, disclosed this on Monday while defending their budget at the House of Representatives, noting that the uniforms are part of the efforts to make the drivers fit properly into the structure.
The budget implies that the FIRS will be spending about N188,000 to sew each driver’s uniform.
The service also budgeted N825 million for refreshment and N250 million for security vote.
The committee had said the cost was outrageous but the FIRS chairman justified it, saying security vote, for instance, was meant to attend to some “security issues.”
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“The achievement of 2019 budget will be driven by increase oil and non-oil revenue tax collection,” he said.
“The service in realisation of this responsibility and challenges of doing manual collection will continue to implement automated tax collection for the critical sectors of the economy notably telecommunications, airlines and financial institutions.
“The deployment of these platforms is at no cost to the service and the consultants will only be rewarded on increased revenue generation.
“There will be increased enforcement activities nationwide to bring more tax payers into the tax net and increase compliance level.”