Property owners in Abuja should get ready to start paying taxes on their properties as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has approved a draft property tax regulation for the city.
It was gathered that the FCT-Internal Revenue Service had commenced the implementation of Capital Gains Tax in Abuja, as stipulated in the Capital Gains Tax Act 2004.
The CGT imposes a tax of 10 percent on the total amount of chargeable gains (after making allowable deductions from the computation of such gains) accruing to any person on the disposal of chargeable assets in a year of assessment.
The Executive Chairman, FCT-IRS, Haruna Abdullahi, who disclosed this to journalists in Abuja on Sunday, also stated that the capital city’s revenue service had been able to grow its Internally Generated Revenue to about N140bn.
Commenting on measures being put in place by the service to drive revenue for the FCT, Abdullahi said the minister had approved some key initiatives to achieve this.
He said, “In the last three weeks, the minister has approved some initiatives that are huge and will certainly change the dynamics in terms of the bottom line. Just the other day, we submitted a draft proposal to the minister for the FCT property tax regulation.
“The FCT-IRS Act empowers the minister to come up with a property tax regulation for the FCT. So we had a long conversation and we suggested it to the minister, and he asked us to come up with a draft regulation, which we did, and he has approved the initiative.
“So we have an inter-agency collaboration whereby we review it because the draft was just done by the FCT-IRS, but that’s not enough, you need other stakeholders. So he approved the initiative to go ahead and review the draft and then come back.
“Subsequently at the end of the day, he will sign the regulation and is gazetted and implemented. So that alone should tell you that there is a huge positive impact on the bottom line of the IGR in the city.”
He further pointed out that the minister also approved the full implementation of the Capital Gains Tax in Abuja, stressing that this would also increase the revenue targets of the FCT.
“Also, just recently we inaugurated another committee, we are now implementing the Capital Gains Tax law. Previously people just voluntarily go and pay, so there is very little payment in terms of capital gains tax.
“But now we have briefed the minister and he has approved the inter-agency collaboration and so we are now going to begin to implement the Capital Gains Tax fully.
“So you can imagine an FCT with a property tax, a fully implemented Capital Gains Tax, and then about a month ago there was a circular where the minister approved the implementation of Section 85 of the Personal Income Tax Act and Section 31 of the FCT IRS Act,” Abdullahi added.
