Workers, guests stranded as Enugu seals hotels over tax evasion

The Enugu State Internal Revenue Service has sealed some hotels for tax evasion in compliance with an order obtained from the High Court in Enugu on November 29 to seal the businesses.

It was, however, learnt that guests and workers of some of the hotels in Enugu were locked in by officials of the agency who were on a revenue drive on Friday.

The Enugu State Government, through the ESIRS, approached the court seeking an order restraining the respondents for failure to pay their staff members’ pay-as-you-earn tax, development levy, and companies withholding tax due to the state government from 2015 to 2020 for some, and 2018 to 2021 for others.

It was further learned that following the court order, the enforcement team of the revenue agency stormed the various defaulting hotels and other businesses in the early hours of Friday to seal them for tax evasion.

However, trouble started when the enforcement team of the agency sealed and locked up the defaulting hotels, and at the same time denied guests and workers of the affected hotels the opportunity to leave the premises.

One of the affected hotels is La Virgin Suites & Residence, where high-profile guests were said to have missed their early morning flights and other business engagements that brought them to Enugu.

It was a similar situation in other affected hotels as only guests without cars were allowed to leave through the back gates of some of the hotels, while the main gates were shut.

Taxi drivers who had gone to pick up their clients also had their vehicles locked in by the enforcement team.

A taxi driver said, “I came to the hotel here to pick up my client who had a 7:40 am flight. As I drove into the hotel premises and started calling my client that I was around, I noticed the unusual movement of people who looked like task force people.

“I didn’t bother myself as I thought they were there for their own business. It was when my client emerged from his room around 7:25 am that I started driving back towards the gates but nobody was there to open the gate for me.

“That was when I realised that we had been locked in by the tax collectors. I also noticed that some other businessmen who tried to leave for their businesses became helpless as the task force men told anyone who cared to call the governor.”

A hotel operator in the city, who preferred anonymity, decried what he described as low patronage of their facilities due to the current economic climate.

He said, “It is very difficult for lots of people, especially an average Nigerian, to start visiting and spending in hotels during this period of hardship. We have tried to explain to the government but they won’t understand.”

However, addressing journalists shortly after the exercise, the Chairman of the Enugu State Internal Revenue Service, Ekene Nnamani, said after a tax audit, it was discovered that many institutions had not been meeting their tax obligations for the past seven years.

Nnamani added, “We even served them the intention to sue them in court and when those things failed, we instituted a case against them in our courts, after the court had heard our applications, they rejected some asking us to go and do more work on them, and then granted us an order for 16 corporate entities who had failed to comply with the tax laws.

“Let them go and pay their tax. So, our intention is not actually to destroy businesses, but to announce to the whole people of Enugu that we are not joking with our taxes.”