By.Juliana Katung
Kaduna (Nigeria) – Kaduna state House of Assembly, Northwest of the country , has directed the State Revenue Service to take proactive measures against local government taxes defaulters.
The Assembly gave the directive through its committee on Finance when officials of the Revenue Service appeared before it for its quarterly briefing.
During the interaction, the Chairman House Commitee on Finance , Sani Gimi stressed the need for the Service to start using its powers on the local government councils in order to ensure effective revenue generation.
” if they are not doing well , let’s start setting examples by taking proactive action, because Its dishearten to see a common man paying his revenue and some body is cornering the money using the money for his own personal benefit, Its very dishearten” he said.
The chairman described the service as an engine room that would take government to a promised land , hence the need for it to be serious and active.
“We want the service to do more , it is dishearten to see that some revenues are leaking, they will collect the money but is not coming into the government purse.
“We encourage them to take proactive action to make sure that any money that is collected is remitted to government purse.”.
According to him , the purpose of the meeting was to interact with the members of the Revenue Service and review its performance in 2017.
And also to rub minds on issue that has to do with revenue collection of federal government establishments ,state agencies and local government
Gimi tasked them to do more especially on the federal government establishments and the local government councils in the state.
He stressed the need for government to allocate more funds to the service, ” A lot of money should be released to the Services ,without money, you can’t generate money , we are going to encourage them to open up more avenue’s in terms of finance”.
The Executive Chairman , State Internal Revenue Service , Muktar Ahmed appreciated the enabling environment created by government and its support in the areas of tax payment in the State.
Ahmed however appealed to the House to amend some sections of the tax codification law passed by the Assembly for smooth operation.
He said the Services would from now on work on the approved budget document presented to each local government towards the targeted revenue.
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/02/15/governance/nigeria-kaduna-legislature-approves-lgs-2018-budget-with-over-n1-billion-increase/
