The Edo Internal Revenue Service (EIRS) and the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) have agreed to share data to plug tax leakages in the state.

EIRS’s Executive Chairman, Mr Igbinidu Inneh, had sought the collaboration of his organisation with NIS, during a courtesy visit to the NIS state Comptroller, Mrs Augusta Okueyungbo, in Benin.

A statement by EIRS’s head of Media Communication, Mr Courage Eboigbe, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Benin, quoted Inneh as requesting the collaboration to boost revenue generation for both state and federal governments.

He said collaboration between both organisations as members of the Joint Tax Board (JTB), through sharing of requisite data and documentation, capture of expatriate returns, and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) details, would help to plug tax leakages.

Inneh said: “The Nigerian Immigration Service is very critical in the entire process of documentation and management of the entry and exit point of people, and critical in the supply and control of expatriate memo as far as Nigeria is concerned.”

He noted that to block loopholes there was need for “compliance with annual filing requirements since EIRS and the NIS are partner institutions, hence the need by staff to file their tax requirements promptly.

“And also, the need to ensure that the remittances of Pay As You Earn (PAYE) which are taxes deducted from earnings of your personnel are properly remitted to the coffers of government.”

He stated that “same thing applies to Withholding Taxes which relate to enterprises and individuals who do business with the NIS.

“This, administratively has to do with the monthly expatriate returns of companies who employ expatriates to do businesses in Edo State whom are required as a matter of law to file.

“A lot of these companies do not file these monthly returns. They mostly manipulate the entries to claim/show they have 10 expatriate staff to fill the quota they have applied for.

“There are entry and exits; they simply substitute the names. They don’t go through that process which they are supposed to follow in a number of instances.

“They are supposed to fill a deletion list. Instead, they simply takeout the names of those who have exited and introduce a new list. It is something we must discourage.”

Inneh noted that aside taking our Immigration and regulation laws for granted, there was need to track migratory patterns of those who had been approved to work in the country.

The comptroller, while affirming to a symbiotic relationship with sister organisations and stationing its personnel in the 18 local government areas of the state for effective discharge of duties, promised to deliver the requests made by the EIRS to her superiors.