Kaduna State government says the state generated N17 billion as Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, in 2016.
Chairman, Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service, KDIRS, Malam Murktar Ahmed, told newsmen that the state targets N50.2 billion IGR in 2017, an average of N4.1 billion monthly.
He explained that the N17 billion generated in 2016 represented an increase of about 50 per cent from the N11.5 billion generated in 2015.
He attributed the increasing revenue profile of the state to the recent reform in revenue collection, particularly the new tax law that established the KDIRS in March 2016.
He said that the law had among other things harmonised and automated all revenue collections in the state.
“The law has abolished physical collection of cash by any staff of the service. Every tax payer now pays his tax directly in the bank. This has helped in blocking leakages,” he added.
The chairman explained that the state was able to double its IGR from between N600 and N800 million a month to an average of N1.4 billion a month, courtesy of the new law.
“When we came on board, the monthly collection was hovering from 600 to 900 million, but from the time I took over in January 2016, it keeps going up until it peaked at two billion in December.
“It went up to 1.6 billion in June and July, and went as high as N2.1 billion in December, but on the average, the monthly collection stood at 1.4 billion.
“This was achieved by not imposing a single tax. In short, the new tax law reduces some tax rates. What we did was to simply improved efficiency in tax collection.
“What was happening in the past was that most of what government was collecting as revenue does not end up in government accounts.
“The process was sloppy and there was a lot of diversion of the resources. The law, therefore closed the gaps, such that only the state revenue service is empowered to collect revenue, “Ahmed explained.
He said that APC-led administration had restored confidence on tax payers through massive execution of people oriented projects across the state.
According to him, tax payers were responding on payments because they are seeing where their money is being invested in.
The chairman said, “Notwithstanding, we would carry out massive awareness campaign on the need for people to pay their tax.
“We are currently renovating all our offices to ease the pains of doing businesses, by ensuring that our staff and clients are comfortable.”
On the challenges of the automated revenue collection, particularly in places where there are no banks, the chairman said that money agents, certified by the Central Bank of Nigeria would be deployed.
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