The Borno State Internal Revenue Service (BoIRS) said it introduced tax relief for payers to reduce hardship and ease of doing business in the state.

This is even as the service was able to block leakages and generated N2.8 billion Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) between January 1st and February 15th, this year 2024.

This was disclosed at the weekend by the Executive Chairman of the service, Prof Bello Ibrahim, during a press briefing which took place at the conference room of the BoIRS in Maiduguri.

Ibrahim explained that the signing of Executive Order (5) by Governor Babagana Zulum has led to the establishment of the Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM), which allows the service to listen to all complaints from taxpayers and give Redress.

”I am happy to inform you that the signing of Executive Order (5) by His Excellency, Governor Babagana Zulum has led to the establishment of the Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM).

“This allows the service to attend to and listen to all complaints from the general public on the issues of taxation.

“Even today, we received complaints and reviewed them. An individual can walk into our office and say this tax behaviour is huge on me, I can’t pay.

“We then look at the complaints and see where we can panel beat. We will ask him for his explanation to figure out how we can provide him with tax relief,” he said.

Professor of Economics said that in all states of the federation taxpayers must comply with the 67-day statutory period otherwise it becomes an act of enforcement.

“Remember I said, if you have N2,000 in Borno State, you can pay in three instalments, isn’t it a relief?

“On average, a roadside vulcaniser pays N6,000 no matter how big the business is, provision shops pay N9,500, and they can pay 9 times. Is it not a relief?

“This is not practised anywhere. It’s part of the relief we are giving to taxpayers. We need tax in order to survive as a state, we don’t have anything” he said.

He noted that all governments around the world rely on tax for revenue to engage in meaningful development projects.

“We have people and we want to rely on them and in doing that, we have been very lenient and considerate on the situation on the ground” he added.

He said the tax model adopted by the commission is teaching people to accept taxation.

“It would interest you to know that the service under my leadership was able to block leakages and generate N2.8 billion IGR between January 1st and February 15th this year, this is unprecedented in the history of the BoIRS.

“The Service collected N1.7 billion in revenues in January, while N1.1 billion had been generated from February 1 to February 15th, 2024.

“We also generated N19.4 billion from Ministries, Departments and Agencies as well as the 27 local government areas in last year, 2023.

”We achieved these through our sustainable introduction of four alternative means of payments, which include; commercial banks, Point of Service (POS), Android phones and tax payment agents at no cost.

“The state has recorded this remarkable increase in revenue due to blockage of leakages, dedication and improved welfare of staff as well as application of modern technology in the tax collection payment systems,” he stated. (Vanguard)

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