The executive chairman of the Ebonyi State Board of Internal Revenue Services, Chief Christopher Omo-Isu, has said the board is striving towards increasing internally generated revenue of the state.
Omo-Isu, who stated this on Monday while briefing journalists in Abakaliki, said the board is poised to boost the revenue generation of the state by a greater percentage to enable Governor Francis Nwifuru to execute more life-touching projects in the state.
He decried the activities of fake revenue taskforce agents who go about extorting petty traders in the various markets in the state.
He asserted that the board is making efforts to checkmate them.
He further said that the board has launched tax digital automation to block all revenue generation leakages in the state.
He said: “When we were inaugurated, Governor Francis Nwifuru made it clear that there are categories of people that we should not tax in Ebonyi State. You can’t go to the market and tax people who are selling vegetables.
“We even had a writeup that we circulated, telling our agents not to tax people who are doing business that are not up to 50 or 100 thousand.
“We made it a point of duty, if you are working for this service, don’t go to such people to tax them. We don’t go to markets to ask somebody who is selling tomatoes or vegetables to pay tax. If any person is doing it, such person or people are not from this service, and they are not doing it on behalf of the board.
“We did not engage such person or people and they are not from us; this is because we know our targets. In the issue of tax, you don’t force people to pay; rather, you convince people that it is their social responsibility to pay tax, and they will come to pay.
“So, all these people collecting taxes from the tomatoes, vegetable sellers and other petty traders are not from us and we can’t encourage them to do so.
“We have set up our taskforce to go to the markets and we are working with the police to get those collecting taxes from peasant farmers and petty traders arrested.
“We are doing everything possible to make sure that our revenue generation is boosted. And what we are trying to do, is make sure that all leakages are stopped.
“For instance, some people will come here, in my office, I will be here, if you come to pay tax, somebody may stop you there and collect more money from you and will come here to remit small money to us here.
“That’s the leakage, but if you are paying directly through the tax digital automation to the government account, that won’t happen.
“So we are doing all things possible to stop the leakages, so that, if you pay any tax, it will get to the state government directly.”