The Board of Internal Revenue, BIR, Abia State, Thursday, sealed several business premises in Umuahia the state capital over tax default.

Some of the affected businesses include fast-food joints, Bars, and Supermarkets among others located in different parts of the state capital.

Addressing newsmen after the exercise, the leader of the task force, and the Officer in charge of Compliance and Enforcement, Mr Francis Emeruwa, said the action became necessary following the refusal of the owners of the affected businesses to honour various demand notices and invitations for dialogue by the Board.

Emeruwa who explained that the indebtedness was from 2022 backwards, expressed displeasure at the nonchalance of business operators to pay tax, an attitude he said, does not support good governance.

” People don’t voluntarily come to pay their taxes. So, we have to use approaches backed by law to enforce compliance.

” Some of them have been owing since 2018, some since 2019. We invited them but they refused to come. We followed due process. We went to court and obtained a court order after they ignored several invitations.”

He said that the current administration in the state had demonstrated care and commitment to work for the people, hence the need for people to reciprocate the various developmental strides of the Government by paying their taxes.

Emeruwa said that the BIR Management led by Professor Udochukwu Ogbonna was committed to improving the Internally Generated Revenue of the state and to judiciously accounting for every revenue generated.

He said that the BIR boss under whose watch the state’s IGR witnessed a leap, was still ready to replicate the feat and complement the efforts of Gov. Alex Otti- led administration in moving the state forward.

The Enforcement Officer, who noted with concern that many taxpayers in the state ” are defaulting”, urged them to pay up to enable the Government to discharge its responsibilities to the citizenry.

Vanguard observed that according to one of the court orders, the affected defaulter owed N650,400 covering 2021-2022. (Vanguard)

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