Borno will not introduce new taxes — Official
Prof. Bello Ibrahim, the Chairman Borno State Internal Revenue Service,said that the agency has no plan to introduce any new tax in the state for now.
Ibrahim in an interview on Sunday in Maiduguri, said the state was for now focusing more on harnessing all the available means to ensure that no revenue escaped from its collectors.
He announced that the agency had introduced a new payment gateway in order to improve efficiency and productivity in the state tax collection.
“We have introduced an Informal Sector Collection, called the automated process of tax payments. You don’t need to come to pay your tax physically.
“We are trying to eliminate cash payments. We discovered that the informal sector deals with little; little payments of N1,000, N2,000, particularly in cattle markets in the process of loading and uploading in the garages.
“So, we discovered that along the line, the revenue officers are in the habit of collecting revenue without remitting it all,” Ibrahim said.
According to him, some of the tax collectors at the local government areas are in the habit of remitting between 30 and 40 per cent of the collected revenue, hence the need to introduce the automated process of paying revenue.
He said that the introduction of automated processes had completely changed the narrative in the state revenue collection system, adding that with the automated process, the agency would easily monitor daily collection from their phones.
“I can show you today’s collection from the informal sector on my phone now,” Ibrahim said.
The chairman said that the agency had appointed supper agents who would be managing collections and remittance through their wallet system.
He said that the agency would guide revenue consultants on how to train their agents who would be working on the field to collect the revenue through their wallet and remit the same to the government’s Single Treasury Account (TSA).
“Now through the wallet, the moment you collect money as an agent, that money will automatically go into the TSA.
“Your percentage will go to you, which is normally five per cent and the rest will go to the account of the state government.
“By introducing this within Maiduguri, some parts of Jere, Konduga and Mafa LGAs, the local government authorities’ IGR inflow has increased from 300 to 400 per cent, which is the first of its kind,” the chairman said.
Ibrahim said that the state Harmonised Revenue Law had actually empowered the agency to collect every revenue from the local governments which further gave the agency advantage against those who objected to the implementation of the new innovation.
“Thanked God, the enhanced revenue law empowered us to collect every revenue, be it for MDAs or local government, that law has consolidated everything and the power to collect proceeds from the account of LGAs is based with this agency.
“Now we collect and then give them back what the government has approved for them.
“It is normal 85 per cent goes back to the local government collections, 15 per cent goes to TSA.
“So we believe with this transformative policy by the current administration of Gov. Babagana Zulum, by the time we introduce this in Southern Borno and expanded to other LGAs, the sky is the limit,” Ibrahim said.
