By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
In a bid to harness and boost the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has inaugurated the Capital Gain Tax Implementation Committee for the FCT.
The Mandate Secretary, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public Private Partnership, Barr. Chinedum Kelechi while inaugurating the Committee on Tuesday, said that, the Hon. Minister of the FCT, Barr. Nyesom Wike has approved the implementation of the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) Act, Cap.CI LFN 2004 (as ).
Kelechi explained that the Act imposes a CGT tax rate of 10% on the total amount of chargeable gains accruable to any person upon disposal of his/her chargeable asset or assets in a year of assessment after deduction of the allowable expenses from the gains made on the assets disposal and to be remitted to the FCT Internal Revenue Service as required by the extant law.
Furthermore, he noted that to fully harness the potential of CGT in FCT, the Minister has also approved inter-agency collaboration and synergy between the FCT-IRS and other relevant agencies that would work for smooth implementation of this CGT Act.
Stating the terms of reference, the Mandate Secretary charged the committee to conduct comprehensive awareness and education campaigns to improve citizens understanding and also regular stakeholders’ engagement through business associations, chambers of commerce, Nigeria Bar Association and other relevant organizations.
He urged the committee to conduct monitoring of transactions across the stakeholder agencies and enforce the implementation of CGT in accordance with extant laws, also enjoin members to collaborate with the judiciary to handle cases of severe non-compliance or fraud as well as establishing transparent dispute resolution mechanism among others.
According to him, the committee which would be headed by the Executive Chairman FCT-IRS as chairman, Solicitor General, Director, Land Department, Director, Development Control, Director, Abuja Geographic Information System and the Chairman of Nigerian Bar Association as members while the Director, Tax Operations in FCT-IRS would serve as secretary.
In his remarks, the Acting Executive Chairman, FCT-IRS, Mr. Haruna Abdullahi said CGT is part of the tax types the Service is empowered by law to collect but however lamented that only less than 5% of what is due from capital gain tax is being generated.
Abdullahi expressed joy on the commitment of the FCT minister to bring together relevant stakeholders to work with the Service to enhance the revenue in the territory.
