The Federal Capital Territory Internal Revenue Service (FCT-FIRS) has declared that it could easily provide a steady annual tax income of N300bn to N400bn when there is improved tax filing compliance by Abuja residents.
This, the Service said will make room for high employment, curb low income and provide enhanced services to the residents.
Acting Executive Chairman, FCT-IRS, Haruna Abdullahi, who made this assertion during a tax seminar on reviving the culture of filing tax returns, stated that 90% of the FCT residents registered for tax do not file their tax returns.
Abdullahi added that the Service has observed the worrying trend of engagement of unprofessional consultants by Taxpayers to prepare and file returns with seemingly very wealthy individuals being encouraged to file ridiculously low annual income of N1m to N2m.
He disclosed that so far, FCT-IRS raised the figure of Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TIN) issued from about 10,000 in 2017 to over 1,200,000 number of individuals registered in the Territory.
Read More:FCT-IRS Decries Low Level Of Taxpayers Compliance
According to him, the average number of Taxpayers outside those remitting through the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) scheme has remained in the region of 4,000 with a significant percentage of stop filers.
He added that the number of Taxpayers under the PAYE scheme is about 120,000 with half the figure comprising staff of Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) on the IPPIS platform and those working for the FCTA and the Area Councils.
“Only 10% of the registered Taxpayers file their tax returns. In response to this challenge and to cushion the effect, the Service has introduced the Key Account Managers (KAM) who follow up with taxpayers via one on one basis. This year, we intend to increase our collection to N150bn and are in good stead to recover some unremitted taxes and levies taking us to a targeted collection figure of N200b. We must not miss the fact that this collection is only coming from the 20 percent registered Taxpayers in the territory and we believe that with enhanced compliance by the remaining residents, we can easily provide a steady annual tax income of N300b to N400b”, he stated.
The one-day seminar had in attendance stakeholders from revenue generation services across the country, traditional Leaders amongst others.
They also pledged to work in synergy with the FCT-IRS scale up revenue generation in the FCT by convincing Tax payers on the need to pay their taxes.
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