By Laide Akinboade, Abuja

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Thursday revealed that it’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), increased from N211,100,288,136.36  in  2023 to N252,825,487,775.71 which represents a 19.8% increase on last year’s collection.

The Acting Executive Chairman, Federal Capital Territory Internal Revenue Service, FCT-IRS, Michael Ango, stated this while fielding questions from journalists in Abuja.

He said his agency was able to meet about 100% of their target for 2024.

According to Ango, “As you may be aware, the FCTIRS reported a total revenue collection of N211,100,288,136.36 for the 2023 fiscal year from all sources.

“Having said that, this performance was due to the efforts of our staff, the management of the FCTIRS and of course the support that we got from secretariats, departments and agencies of the FCT who have all been supportive and have collaborated with the FCT in this regard. I must also mention the support and understanding that we got from the area councils and other agencies of government within and outside the FCT. Let me highlight some key achievements and developments which occurred in 2024.

“Most significantly of course is my appointment as acting executive chairman in August 2024 further to which we have taken certain steps to improve the ability of the FCTIRS to discharge its mandates. Some of the significant changes and developments that have been introduced since my appointment include the following. We did a review and expansion of the organizational structure of the FCTIRS and we created new departments such as the audit department, debt management and enforcement which did not previously exist.

“We also expanded the tax operations department by creating two new directorates, one mainly focused on ministries, departments and agencies and the other one focused on individuals, enterprises and partnerships. So for those of us who are not tax people let me explain. Typically in the FCT we collect taxes from individuals but also we collect taxes from the individuals through corporate entities”.

He said, “So for example companies, ministries and departments of government. In this regard what we have done is to segment the collection of those taxes into two different directorates. So you have a directorate that will be focused on ensuring compliance by ministries, departments, agencies of government and other corporate entities including international organizations and you have a separate department which will be focused on ensuring tax compliance by individuals, enterprises and partnerships”.

He stressed that, “We also created a high net worth individual unit which is focused on taxation of high net worth individuals in the FCT. Now the whole idea is that we need a unit within the agency that will focus, must be with such light on high net worth individuals and for this purpose we define high net worth individuals as any person who earns 25 million Naira and above annually whether from paid employment, whether from carrying on business or even from passive income such as dividends, interest, etc, rents. That is our definition of HNI for this purpose and so we have created a unit that will be focused on taxation of HNIs and in this regard we have identified at this time over 10,000 individuals in the FCT who have met that particular threshold.

“And this is only based on limited information that we have. As the unit begins to become operational, we believe that we will even identify more of such individuals and we are excited to send notices to them asking them to regularise their tax status in the FCT and I can tell you that the response has been favourable so far. Now I am also focused on harmonisation of revenue administration in the FCT which is part of the mandate that we have under our law as the Internal Revenue Service for the FCT”.

He said his agency has strengthened their collaboration with various agencies of government, which includes their collaboration with the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit.

On capacity building, he said a minimum of 52 training programmes, for their workers.