THE Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed has approved the strengthening and harmonization of tax collection across the 16 local governments.

To this end, the governor has approved the setting up of a joint revenue committee to effectively carry out the task .

This was disclosed by Mr Lakan Rotimi, the Deputy Director, Informal Sector, Kwara Internal Revenue Service.

According to him, it was imperative to harmonize revenue drive monitoring and collection in order to avoid multiple taxation, "people operating in the informal sector operate within the domain of the Local Governments and we don't want multiple people interfacing with the payers as a result, we offered to assist the local governments in collecting what belongs to them and bring the people operating in the informal sector into the tax net".

"The first thing we did was to secure the buy- in of the LG Chairmen and clearly from the previous and subsequent engagements we have been able to achieve that because it's obvious to everybody that people get away or invade payment of whatever is due to Local Government and the State. For instance when you go for collection, the payer would be like oh local government was here the other day and you again today and consequently the state misses out from what it ought to get".

Lakan said the Service having established and agreed on harmonising of tax collection, is at the stage of working out collection strategies while reiterated that tax is just one of the methods the State is adopting to increase revenue drive.

The committee that would be saddled with the responsibility to effectively oversee whatever understanding KWIRS has with the Local Government Chairmen and principal officers would comprise the chairman of KWIRS, finance secretary and some principal officers of the Local Governments.