States’ tax revenue collection on the increase —FIRS

Total tax collections by the 26 state governments in the country has increased astronomically in the last few years, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has said.

This was disclosed by the Chairman of FIRS, Dr Babatunde Fowler, at the Nigerian Governors’ Forum Annual National Peer Learning Event on Wednesday in Abuja.

Fowler, who was represented by the Executive Secretary, Joint Tax Board, also disclosed that since the turn of the century, tax revenues collected by the FIRS had experienced a growth of over 500 per cent from about N400 billion to over N2 trillion by 2010.

“By 2017, FIRS collection has topped N4,027.9 trillion.

“In the similar vein, cumulative state IGR collections experienced an astronomical leap of nearly 40,000 per cent from pre-1999 figures of just over N1 billion to over N400 billion in 2010.

“As at 2017, total state collections stood at N936.4 billion.

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“Current year on year trends are looking quite bright in 2018 as FIRS half year collection of 2.52 billion already has a 41.9 per cent increase over the same period in 2017.

“Cumulative states 2018 half year on year growth topped 28.1 per cent with a collection of N581.95 billion as against the collection over the same period in 2017.’’

The FIRS chairman however said that though the performances have been encouraging, more work still needs to be done.

He called on State Commissioners of Finance to join forces with the state executive chairmen of their various revenue authorities to ensure that their governors adopted the political will to pursue human and institutional capacity building, while also encouraging the modernisation of tax administration in their states.

 

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