Amid pressures from dwindling revenue of government and following revelation made by some governors that they can no longer pay the N18,000 minimum wage, Otive Igbuzor, executive director, Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), a civil liberty organisation expert, Wednesday, urged state governments to centralise database of tax payers to boost their internally generated revenue (IGR).
He said the problem with many states was their continue dependence on federal allocation, which had been dwindling as a result of fall in global oil prices, added to their inability to boost their IGR.
Igbuzor, who disclosed this in Abuja at the Voice to the People (V2P) Policy Dialogue on Anambra State Budget and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), stressed that scholars had argued if the right parameters were set out, all states in Nigeria could generate enough IGR without depending on the Federal Government.
According to him, “I think it will be criminal to reduce somebody’s salary from N18,000 per month, how will the person survive. If your transport to and fro is N500 that is cheap, but considering where most workers stay, especially in places like Abuja, they cannot stay in the town, so, they have to come from the communities, with average of 22 working days, you will spend N11,000, it doesn’t make sense at all to reduce the minimum wage.”
Suggesting way to advance revenue collection for the states, he said: “What state governments need to do is to increase their IGR, and state like Lagos has showed clearly what needs to be done to increase revenue of the state.”
The executive director explained that the challenges of IGR include lack of adequate information on tax payers, lack of co-operation from tax payers, insufficient information on the logic and significance of taxes, lack of uniformity of incidence of taxation, among others.
“We know all over Nigeria that the taxes that people pay are too low and what states need to do to generate taxes; you need to have a comprehensive database of taxable persons and organisation, and also to simplify tax collection process, and ensure that the collection is technologically supported and ensure the process of getting your tax certificates is simple,” Igbuzor said.
