Ogun State expands tax net to border communities

The Ogun State Government says it will  look beyond taxing border communities in Lagos to Ogun communities bordering Oyo, Osun and Ondo, to achieve its N75bn revenue target in 2021.

The Executive Chairman, Ogun State Internal Revenue Service, Anthony Olaleye, said this in a presentation of the 2021 budget breakdown on Thursday.

Internal Revenue Service
Olaleye said the Internal Revenue Service was going to expand its net to other border states besides Lagos and would ensure every taxable resident in the state paid the appropriate tax.

He said, “If you look clearly, you’ll see that not everybody has been paying taxes as appropriate. Looking at the area of border tax, the IRS is driven by the residency rule, meaning everyone living in the state, even if working in another state, must pay their personal income tax to Ogun state.

“But beyond Lagos, we have not really looked into other border states. We have Oyo, Osun and Ondo state. These are areas where we are really going to expand the net.”

Improving  tax collection
The Executive Chairman also stated that the agency was already working with market associations and trade associations to improve tax collection for the informal sector.

According to him, ‘‘a larger percentage of the Ogun State population is not in paid employment but in the informal sector.”

He therefore noted that the IRS would see that persons in the informal sector also paid their appropriate taxes as they ought to.

“Our focus is not on any levy of charge. It is on the personal income tax as entrenched in the Personal Income Tax Act of 2011, particularly section 104,” Olaleye said.

He reiterated that the agency was going to ride on the back of automation and digitisation, adding that the key area the IRS was focusing on in terms of the revenue lines was coming largely from Pay-As-You-Earn and Back Duty Assessment.

NP