The Federal Inland Revenue Service collected a total sum of N1.782tn in tax revenue between January and July this year.

The figure represents an increase in tax revenue of N224.14bn when compared to the N1.558tn collected in the same period in 2016.

The Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr. Tunde Fowler, announced this on Tuesday, while defending the budget of the agency before the Senate Committee on Finance in Abuja.

He also projected raising the current N828bn annual Value Added Tax collection to N1.8tn this year, representing over 125 per cent increase.

The FIRS boss said the agency had also set tax revenue targets for 2017 based on the Federal Government’s 2016-2018 Medium Term Revenue Framework amounting to N4.89tn.

Fowler said the FIRS budget was focused on capacity to increase VAT and other non-oil revenues.

According to him, the performance of the 2017 budget will be driven by VAT collection.

“The service, in realisation of this responsibility and challenges of doing manual collection, has automated VAT collection for the critical sectors of the economy, notably telecommunications, airlines and financial institutions,” he stated.

Fowler explained that the deployment of the platforms was at no cost to the FIRS, while the consultants engaged would only be rewarded on incremental revenue generated.