The Federal Inland Revenue Service on Thursday said it collected the sum of N4.01tn in the first nine months of this year.

The Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr Babatunde Fowler, gave the figure during a meeting with the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

The amount, according to a statement issued by the firm, is N77.89bn higher than the N3.94tn collected between January and September 2018.

He expressed optimism that the FIRS would do better than the N5.3tn it collected last year.

Fowler challenged senators to have the courage to pass legislation that would send tax evaders to jail.

He said if this was done, the over 40,000 taxpayers who had between N100m and N1bn as turnover in their accounts but not paying taxes would hurriedly pay their taxes.

“In Nigeria, if you have the courage to pass laws that will send tax defaulters to jail, the 40,000 tax defaulters will pay,” he said.

Fowler said that it was not true that Nigeria had not given incentives to small businesses, adding, “I will first start with incentives. It was true that the past government, the government before this one did give a lot of incentives.

“Over the last few years, from 2015, we had waived all interests and penalties for small-scale businesses that did not remit taxes or were up to date with their filing,” he said.

In terms of the FIRS’ target not being met, he said the 2019 target was a 32 per cent higher than the 2018 target.

In terms of total collection, he said the FIRS was currently ahead of 2018 target by 13 per cent, which translated to N71bn.

“We believe that the non-oil sector will continue to improve. We are currently at 72 per cent in the non-oil sector. The bulk of the revenue of the FIRS comes from the middle of the year, from July to December.