Federal Inland Revenue Service have reached a decision to go after skit makers that have refused to perform their civil responsibility of paying taxes. some of which includes Mr. Macaroni and Taooma.
The agency has deemed it fit to set up committees to investigate and explain to the skit makers and others generating revenue from the social media reasons why it is compulsory to pay tax from their income.
The Special Adviser on Media to the chairman of the FIRS, Dare Adekambi, made this known to newsmen, revealing that social media content creators and influencers constituted a major block of tax evaders
“They are not paying,” Dare Adekambi, Special Adviser on Media to the chairman of the FIRS, stated when asked if Nigerian content creators file tax returns.
“Skit makers, influencers and other content creators who are making money using digital platforms need to be paying tax. There is a law in Nigeria that requires everybody who earns income to pay tax. They earn in dollars. Tax is a civic obligation; civil servants are paying, so they also have to pay.“
“The CAC’s Registrar-General and the FIRS’ chairman recently discussed how they can work together in bringing them into the tax net. The challenge is how to track them, but we are looking into it,” Adekambi said.
“If Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms are paying taxes to the government, why would people using those platforms to create content and make money not pay? By the time a committee is a set up to look into it, a broad spectrum of activities will be covered.