Oyo MDAs to stop issuing revenue demand notices from 2019

ALL taxable entities, especially organisations, in Oyo State will from January 2019 receive only one centralised demand notice that encompasses all charges, levies and dues due to the state for the year.

Executive Chairman, Oyo State Board of Internal Revenue, Mr Bicci Alli, who made this known while speaking with TribuneOnline, on Wednesday, said the step would restrict the responsibility of issuing demand notices on all revenues accruable to the state government to the board.

Alli said with the development, Ministries, Departments and Agencies like Environment, Lands and Housing, which currently issue various notices will no more do so as they will be incorporated in the Centralized Harmonised Demand Notice to be issued by the Board of Internal Revenue.

“We are developing a Centralized Harmonised Demand Notice which will become operational in January. Experiences have shown that MDAs in demanding for different collections issue several demand notices and this might increase the cost of collection and make compliance difficult.

“An organization will receive one demand notice from the Board of Internal Revenue which harmonises all an organization should pay to the state government.

“We also intend to incorporate Land Use Charge in it except for some rates or levies that are not fixed or cannot be ascertained.

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Charges by Ministry of Environment, Lands and Housing will now be collected by the Oyo board of internal revenue. It assists government to know who is owing what and reduce the cost of compliance. All collections by MDAs will be issued through the Board of Internal Revenue,” Alli said.

On efforts to reach the targeted monthly Internally Generated Revenue of N5 billion, Alli said the board continued to expand its collection process, centralise its assessment and payment, arrest illegal revenue collectors and reach out to the informal sector by introducing presumptive tax of N3,000.

“We are looking at every source of government revenue. We did a gap analysis of Oyo State vis-a-vis IGR and the GDP and the potential is about N5billion.

“So, we are focusing at every revenue item. We are also working seriously to get into the informal sector of the economy.

“We have spoken to the market people and we there is a presumptive tax of N3000 being paid by those in the informal sector. We are not leaving out any revenue item. Every individual that earns income and resides in the state must pay taxes.

“We are working seriously towards realising N5 billion IGR target. We have developed applications for people to pay. We also collect from the informal sector using POS. We are expanding our collection process.

“We are attacking the collection gaps using all means like enforcement, expanding our offices, expanding our payment options so that people can also pay using bank applications. I believe that by the end of the year we will be able to aggregate our efforts and specifically state where we are.

“We try to ensure that our assessment and payment are centralised. We try to ensure that illegal revenue collectors are picked and charged to court. There are hoodlums who go around collecting money in the name of government.

“90 per cent of those firms shut recently have complied and come forward to pay except for about 10 per cent that have issues relating to evaluation, while one or two are not operational,” Alli said.