Edo State government on Thursday said it had concluded plans to explore new sources to shore up its internally generated revenue (IGR) to 80 percent so as to avoid over dependence on monthly federal allocation.
BusinessDay reports that Emmanuel Usoh, acting chairman, Edo State Internal Revenue Service (EIRS), made the disclosure during a stakeholder’s meeting/proud taxpayers’ awards ceremony in Benin City, the state capital.
Usoh listed the sources to include a shift from direct to indirect tax, consumption tax, land use charge, e-lottery and gaming, entertainment tax, among others.
While noting that 171,000 people pay tax out of the over 4 million population in the state, he said the agency had begun a process to identify who pays what, how, where and when with a view to building a strong database for revenue optimisation.
“The whole essence of IGR reforms is to generate enough revenue to be self-reliant. Therefore, in Edo State, we want to be in a position where we would be able to generate at least 80 percent of the total revenue of the state so that the state would be independent of the Federation Account.
“At the inception of this administration, the IGR was N280 million monthly. With various reform programmes, aimed at eliminating inefficiency in revenue collection process and blocking all avenue of leakages, the monthly IGR rose to over N2 billion monthly,’’ he said
He however lamented that the IGR has dropped from the initial N2 billion to N1.5 billion on the average, monthly, saying that they have been able to increase it to N1.7 billion monthly at the moment.
The EIRS boss attributed the decline to the implementation of the amendment to the personal income Tax Act, 2011 which he said granted huge tax reliefs to majority of taxpayers with a view to increase their disposable income following the removal of subsidy on petroleum products.
He said this resulted in a drop of revenue by about 48 percent under the PAYE, this scheme accounts for about 60 percent of IGR accruable to the state government thereby leading to a significant drop in the monthly revenue.
Usoh who further added that the administration is not oblivious of the extortion being perpetrated by some staff of MDAs and local government council assured that it would collaborate with the councils to ensure that members of the public are not harassed under the guise of collecting revenue.
He explained that the reforms so far implemented had led to a progressive increase in the annual IGR of the state, which saw the state being placed at fourth position in 2014 by the Joint Tax Board (JTB) rating of states IGR.
IDRIS UMAR MOMOH, BENIN
