Fidelis David in Akure
The Ondo State Government has launched its 2023 mobile advert stickers for commercial vehicles in the state.
These is in furtherance of the mandate of the Joint Tax Board (JTB) based on the Personal Income Tax of 2004, to harmonies all taxes in Nigeria and make their payments easy for the people.
The Chairman of Ondo State Internal Revenue Service (ODIRS), Mr. Tolu Adegbie, explained that the new and improved mobile advert sticker would be in force effective from the January 1, 2023, a development he said, that would render the old way of verifying payment with papers invalid.
Adegbie said that the provision of the joint tax law is that once you pay a tax (on mobile advert) in a state it covers for the whole country, stressing that once you have the sticker in Ondo State for instance, it applied to all states over the country.
According to Adegbie, the introduction of mobile advert sticker will also put an end to unnecessary delay, harassments on road users by vendors because the sticker is designed in a way that it could be verified through the QR code.
His words: “What we’ve done is in furtherance of the mandate of the Joint Tax Board (JTB) based on the Personal Income Tax of 2004, which is to harmonies all taxes in Nigeria and make the payment easy for the people.
“Before now, we’ve always collected mobile advert, all commercial vehicles in the country are mandated to buy mobile advert stickers, we have about 14 to 15 papers, some states will say their own is even different, that you must buy additional one and then, mobile advert is on the concurrent list of the approved list of taxes, so, the state will prepare their own papers, local governments will also prepare their own papers, so, we have two sets of papers and that is why you see harassment on the road of road users.
“Now, JTB has intervened to say let’s harmonies to make things easier for Nigerians who are being harassed on the road all the time, they now designed one single sticker which can be verified through the QR code to know which state it was sold and whether it is genuine or not.”
He stressed that “so, the issue of some people stopping you on the road and telling you that the sticker you are carrying is fake doesn’t arise and they also recommended fixed price of N3,500 for the stickers to the public. N500 is for the printing and N3,000 is for the state actors to share among themselves.
“They didn’t dictate to any state how to share, it’s up to you, what is done is to make recommendation and we in Ondo State have agreed, the Ondo State Signage Agency, all the chairmen of local governments and also the vendors, the mobile advert vendors of the state all agreed on the sharing formula.
“The amount we made last year was small but before we came on board in this state, all revenues from mobile adverts doesn’t come to the state, it is just filtered away, when Akeredolu came in 2018, we tried to look at it and do something but still, we never got more than N1 million but last year, we decided that let’s have a partnership. So, we worked with the local government chairmen and the signage agency we were the middle men, harmonising between the local government and the signage agency whose primary responsibility was to produce the stickers and all of that. So, for the first time, we were able to generate about N10 million.”
He pointed that mobile advert tax is not a high revenue generating activity but the impact on the society is unquantifiable.
“The hours lost by the people stopping motorists on the road harassing ordinary citizens can’t be quantified in monetary terms. Somebody who is going on a journey from Lagos to Abuja and have to be stopped in four different states and harassed because, they say the papers you are carrying is fake and all of that and that person ends up getting to Abuja instead of 4p.m., he gets there at the middle of the night, can you quantity that?
“The person’s life is in danger. You can’t quantity the cost to life. Look at kidnapping all over, so this is more than a revenue issue, it is an issue of public safety and decency.
“All cars and trucks registered in the name of companies must get this sticker, only vehicles registered in individual names are exempted,” Adegbie added.
