The Chairman of the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KDIRS), Muktar Ahmed, said the state government generated more than N17 billion as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in 2016.
He told the News Agency of Nigeria in Kaduna on Sunday that the state government was now targeting N50.2 billion IGR in 2017, an average of N4.1 billion monthly.
He said that N17 billion generated in 2016 represented an increase of about 50 per cent from the N11.5 billion generated in 2015.
He attributed the increase in 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 added that the law had among other things, harmonised and automated all revenue collection in the state.
He said that “the law has abolished physical collection of cash by any staff of the service.
“Every tax payer now pays directly to the bank. This has helped in blocking leakages.”
The chairman explained that the state was able to double its IGR between N600 and N800 million a month to an average of N1.4 billion per month, courtesy of the new law.
“When we came on board, the monthly collection was between N600 and N900 million, but from the time I took over in January 2016, it peaked at two billion in December.
“It went up to 1.6 billion in June and July, and gone as high as N2.1 billion in December, but on the average, the monthly collection stood at N1.4 billion.
“This was achieved by not imposing a single tax; the new tax law reduces some tax rates. What we did was to simply improve efficiency in tax collection.
“What was happening in the past was that most of what government was collecting as revenue never went to government accounts.
“The process was sloppy and there were lots of diversion of resources.
“The law, therefore, closed the gaps, such that only the state revenue service is empowered to collect revenue.”
The chairman also said that the administration had restored confidence in tax payers through massive execution of people oriented projects across the state.
According to him, tax payers are now responding because they are seeing where their money is being invested in.
Mr. Ahmed said the state government would carry out massive awareness on tax payment and where to pay.
He said “we are currently renovating 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, money agents certified by the Central Bank of Nigeria will be deployed.”
