Federal Government uncovers 800,000 companies that never paid taxes

  

   The Federal Government said it had identified over 800,000 companies, including some of its contractors, which had never paid any form of taxes.

   The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, stated this in an article entitled: ‘All change, Nigeria is not an oil economy’.

   In the article, which was made available to newsmen yesterday by her Media Adviser, Oluyinka Akintunde, the minister stated that the government was currently carrying out an audit of the defaulting companies.

Adeosun, who did not provide the identities of the offending companies, however, noted that a situation where the entire country had only 14 million active taxpayers from an economically active base of 70 million was no longer acceptable.

   To address this, she said that the Ministry of Finance had commenced a database project that combines data from the various arms of government, including bank records, property and company ownership, and Customs records.

This, she noted, would assist the ministry to create accurate profiles of those liable to pay taxes.