Kwara Revenue Service records highest revenue since 2016
...Generates N9.5b in 2021 First Quarter
Wole Adedeji, Ilorin
An increased adoption of technology and steady blockade of leakages within the tax administration system has helped the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KW-IRS) to generate N9.51 billion (N9,598,504,939.90) in the first quarter of 2021.
Chairman of the Revenue Service, Mrs. Folashade Omoniyi, who made this known, in Ilorin, the state capital, said the figure was the highest ever collected without any extraordinary item at any quarter since its founding in 2016.
However, Mrs. Omoniyi said the drop in revenue generation in 2020 was expected because of the COVID-19 restrictions but pointed out that the state’s uncompromising adherence to tax break and waivers for businesses during the period, and the fact that its operations majorly manual as at last year, fetched it the feat.
She said the hugely manual nature of its operations in 2020 caused its staff to be unable to move around to collect taxes because of the effect of COVID-19 which actually hit hard.
Even with the constraints, Mrs. Omoniyi said the feat was recorded without any new raise in tax rate, while the agency made deliberate steps to tackle multiple taxation.
Her words, “Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KW-IRS) since inception has operated a manual tax administration system.
“This means assessment and collection of relevant taxes payable to the State Government from both KW-IRS and other MDAs are on contact basis. Despite this, the Service has recorded steady IGR growth over the years.
“These efforts culminated in the IGR growth from N23 billion as at 30thSeptember to N30.7 billion as at the end of the year, 2019.
“The Service did not rest on its oars as various revenue and cost-cutting initiatives were immediately implemented to shore up the State IGR while it worked assiduously to automate its revenue and tax administration processes.
“The various revenue leakage blockages paid off when in quarter one of 2020, the Service generated N7 billion”.
The KW-IRS boss, however, said with the spread of the Coronavirus and subsequent lockdown of the State by the government towards the end of March and up til May, 2020 Kwara State IGR plummeted to N2 billion.
Given that the state’s economy was greatly affected by the lockdown and the state’s collection system was still contact-based as at this time, it was only to be expected that no serious activities would happen in the revenue space for that period.
It is also known that Kwara State was one of the states who followed the Covid19 protocols fully which is a main factor for the Q2 2020 revenue performance.
“Notwithstanding, with the gradual easing of the lockdown, revenue generation by the Service again shot up to N4billion in Q3 2020 and N6 billion in the Q4 of 2020.
Thus, it is made obvious that the low IGR figures in Q2 and Q3 and consequent dip in 2020 IGR performance are solely attributable to the Covid-19 incidence and our contact-based collection which proved quite ineffective while the lockdown lasted.
“Thus, in the first quarter of 2021, Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KW-IRS) recorded an Internally Generated Revenue of N9,598,504,939.90 (Nine Billion, Five Hundred and Ninety Eight Million, Five Hundred and Four Thousand, Nine Hundred and Thirty Nine Naira, Ninety Kobo Only), the highest so far in the history of the Service without an extraordinary item.
Meanwhile, the IGR target for the current fiscal year, the first quarter collections show steady and significant growth, month-on-month as follows: January-N2,984,312,074.60; February- N3,058,746,474.21; March- N3,555,446,391.09, totalling N9,598,504,939.90.
