Plateau Harmonises Tax Collection to Encourage Payers

Seriki Adinoyi in Jos

The Plateau State Government has decided to harmonise its tax collection in a manner that would make payment compliance easy for citizens and promote ease of doing business with the state government.

To this end, harmonisation sub-committee of the Revenue Council headed Mr. Ibrahim Puri, an Executive Director with UBA, held a stakeholders engagement between the state government and local government for the purpose of consolidating collection efforts and for the smooth implementation of the Plateau State Property and Land Use Charge Law 2021.

Addressing the stakeholders, Puri intimated the chairmen of the local governments of what other states are doing to ensure that the revenue profile of the state increased, which would be of immense benefit to the economic development of the local governments.
He said that for purpose of ease of administration and collection, the Property and Land Use Charge Law 2021 harmonised and consolidated property evaluation charges, ground rent, and tenement rate as Land Use Charge.

He added: “The Property and Land Use Charge Law exempts certain properties from paying land use charge such as properties owned by religious bodies and used strictly for public worship, cemeteries, burial grounds, recognised and registered institution or an educational institution certified as not for profit making, public library or private library certified as not for profit making, official palaces of recognised chiefs in the state and any property exempted by the Governor by notice in the gazette.

“The law states that the above properties will forfeit their exemption status if the use of the property changes.”

Commissioner for Lands and Survey, who was represented by Mr. Ndakafor, stated that the law provided the local governments with the opportunity to take advantage of the manpower, technology and structures already established by the state to ensure maximum collection of Local Government Revenues for the respective 17 local governments.

The Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice clarified questions raised on the constitutionality of the harmonisation process. He said that the constitution empowered the state House of Assembly to make laws on the administration of collectible local government revenue titles, and that the Revenue Law 2020 is not inconsistent with the provisions of the constitution and does not negate the autonomy given to the local governments.

The stakeholders resolved that Revenue Law 2020 and the Property and Land Use Charge Law 2021 would be implemented at both state and local government levels, and the sharing formular for Land Use Charge between the state and local government should be discussed further and communicated for both parties to agree on.

Stakeholders also urged the state government to strengthen its institutions to ensure continuity of the processes put in place for a harmonised revenue administration in state, adding that “this will ensure that irrespective of the next administration, no action will be taken that will be detrimental to the local government. The interest of the Local Government should be properly captured in any legislation that affects the local government.

“Similar revenue titles apart from Land Use Charge should be harmonised to avoid undue hardship on payers, and to enable ease of doing business with government.”