By Ben Adoga
Landlords in the FCT will soon pay taxes on rents paid by tenants to them.

This is as stakeholders accused the elite; politicians, big businessmen, and influential people of being the greatest tax defaulters as they don’t pay but circumvent the system.

The Acting Chairman, FCT IRS, Haruna Abdullahi said, to surpass its revenue target of N202 billion for the year 2022, the Service is re-strategizing and refocusing on three streams of tax namely tax on rental income, capital gains tax, and business premises registration fee before the end of the year.

He said “rental income is earned from the rent received for using properties or houses. These properties include several estates, buildings, and apartments scattered across all the area councils of the FCT.”

He explained that 10% of the rent paid to landlords should be remitted as tax to the authorities.

Another tax to be collected by the Service would be Capital Gains Tax, CGT where profits are made from the sale or exchange of capital assets like land, shares, and machinery as well as Business Premises Registration Fee as the Service wants to do massive business premises registration.

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He reiterated the resolve of the Service to sustain aggressive public enlightenment and sensitization campaign to mobilize prospective taxpayers, to boost the revenue base of the FCT Administration.

The Federal Capital Territory Internal Revenue Service (FCT-IRS) is collaborating with the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) to conduct a taxpayer education/enlightenment campaign in Abuja.

Speaking, Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on FCT, Senator Tolu Odebiyi, noted that the FCT-IRS as one of the key revenue generators for the FCT has done well, especially in putting together needed institutional frameworks.

He assured us that the Senate is doing anything possible to work with the FCT-IRS to not only widens its revenue base but ensure efficiency and accountability in the system.