FIRS raises N251bn for TETFund in 10 months, targets N500bn for 2021 ― Chairman

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has collected N251 billion as education tax in the first 10 months of 2020 and remitted the same to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) within the period.

Chairman of Board of Trustees (BoT), TETFund, Mr Kashim Imam, made this known on Wednesday in Lagos at an event to round off the 2020 TETFund/FIRS Joint Interactive Forum organised in all the six geopolitical zones of the country.

He said the N251 billion generated by FIRS for TETFund is out of N277billion target set for the agency for the year and hoping for more money that would have accrued to it for the month of November and December.

He said the agency had set N500 billion target for FIRS for 2021 on the premise that the number of beneficiary public institutions has increased to 226 and with more burdens.

Tribune Online reports that FIRS collects two(2) per cent education tax from the assessable profit of companies registered in Nigeria and remits same to TETFund for its various interventional projects in public tertiary education institutions nationwide.

Mr Imam disclosed that there is already a proposal by TETFund to the Federal Government to increase the education tax to three (3 per cent) and only waiting for action from the National Assembly to facilitate the proposal and make it an Act.

He explained that there are lots of intervention activities not only in terms of physical infrastructures but also in research and staff capacity building developments expected of TETFund for tertiary schools.

He said the Fund had so far embarked in excess of 10,000 projects across the nation’s tertiary schools and that up to 50 per cent of the projects had been completed and impacting positively the beneficiaries and the economy at large.

He commended FIRS on the tax collection, saying should it not for that effort, there would have been a serious financial crisis in the nation’s tertiary schools.

He said TETFund toured some beneficiary schools across the six geopolitical zones recently to assess its intervention activities and their impacts and glad to announce that those institutions well utilised their funds.

In his own remarks, Executive Secretary of TETFund, Professor Suleiman Bogoro, said though there was a steady rise in education tax from 1999 to 2009 which he put at N5 billion to N139 billion and a decline in 2010 (N89 billion) and a big rise again in 2011(N128 billion), 2012( N188 billion) and 2013 (N279 billion), the tax collected subsequently to date has been fluctuating.

He, however, said TETFund would ensure to deepen its collaboration with FIRS to enhance revenue collection drive for TETFund so as to surpass target budget to be able to do more schools.

He said there is additional mandate now which is research and innovation for which President Muhammadu Buhari had approved the upward review of the National Research Fund from N5 billion in 2019 to N7.5 billion this year and also the establishment and funding of 12 centres of excellence, six medical research centres and six colleges of medicine across regions of the country.

In his own remarks, Executive Chairman of FIRS, Mr Muhammad Nami, said though, it is becoming more challenging to collect taxes as many individuals and companies ordinarily don’t like to pay tax, the agency would employ all necessary machinery, especially technology to ensure it improves on its mandates.

Represented at the event by the Director of Medium Tax Department, FIRS, Mr Kabir Abba, FIRS boss assured TETFund of surpassing its target, saying it is always willing to collect the education tax because of the obvious significant impacts of the money on the beneficiary schools and the economy.

According to him, TETFund presence is obvious and not hidden across tertiary institutions in the country.

He, however, noted that the agency had been able to collect N4.122 trillion between January and October 2020 despite Financial Act 2019 incentives, COVID-19 challenges and palliative concessions.

He put non-oil revenue tax collection at N2. 790 trillion and oil revenue at N1.332 trillion during the same period.

In their separate presentations, the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka; Lagos State University(LASU), Ojo; Yaba College of Technology(YABATECH) and the Federal College of Education(Technical) said the contributions of TETFund to their respective schools were enormous across infrastructural provisions, research activities and staff capacity development.

They said it would have been disastrous for the nation’s public tertiary schools without TETFund.

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