By Stanley Onyekwere
In furtherance to its effort to boost Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has constituted and inaugurated Capital Gain Tax (CGT) Implementation Committee for the Territory.
This, followed an approval by the FCT Minister, Barrister Nyesom Wike for the immediate implementation of the CGT Act, Cap.CI LFN 2004 (as amended).
Mandate Secretary, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public Private Partnership, Barr. Chinedum 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.
A statement from Head, Corporate Communications, FCT-IRS, Mustapha Sumaila, said the Mandate Secretary, who spoke while inaugurating the Committee on Tuesday, in Abuja, noted that 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.
It added that Elechi explained that to fully harness the potential of CGT in FCT, the Minister approved for inter-agency collaboration and synergy between the FCT-IRS and other relevant agencies that would work for smooth implementation of this CGT Act.
On the Committee’s terms of reference, the Mandate Secretary revealed that it include; to conduct comprehensive awareness and education campaigns to improve citizens understanding, as well as regular stakeholders engagement through business associations, chambers of commerce, Nigeria Bar Association and other relevant organisations.
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 judiciary to handle cases of severe non-compliance or fraud as well as establishing transparent dispute resolution mechanism among others.
Earlier in his remarks, the Acting Executive Chairman, FCT-IRS, Mr. Haruna Abdullahi said CGT is part of 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 therefore 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.
