The Enugu State Governor, Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah has signed the Enugu State Internal Revenue Service (Establishment and Consolidation of Revenue Administration) Law, 2025.
This law was born out of the cries of business owners in the state who were previously harassed by different groups for various taxes that hampered their business growth.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, the State Governor commended the bill, saying, “This is a major milestone in our commitment to ending multiple-taxation, improving the Ease of Doing Business, and making Enugu the preferred destination for investment.”
“With this new law, we now have a one-stop shop for all tax payments in Enugu. There will be a single collection point and taxpayers will receive the appropriate receipt of payment—no more harassment or uncertainty over who is authorized to collect revenue.”
“This is very important because one of the core indicators of the Ease of Doing Business is to make sure that you have the ease of payment of your taxes and you do not have multiple channels where you are being dragged to pay taxes.”
On disbursement of the revenues collected for both tiers of government, Dr. Mbah explained that the revenue will be shared amongst the Agencies and local and State Governments.
“The new law will effectively consolidate the revenues of the state and local governments, with each tier of government getting what is due to it at the end of the day such as is obtainable in land charges and Value Added Tax, VAT.”
“Land Use Charge is paid to the local government, but collected by the state. So, what we are doing now is essentially consolidate all the other revenue types to ensure that there is one point of collection. So, this is a major milestone and it would also help us have a full line of sight to all the revenues we have in the state,” Mbah reiterates.
Another gain of the law is it empowering the Enugu State Inland Revenue Service to be autonomous. By this, the Agency can set revenue targets, operate professionally, and function efficiently without bureaucratic drawbacks; “it also means better transparency, accountability and service delivery.”
“The Enugu State Inland Revenue Service is now able to act as an autonomous institution of the state government; it means that they can now set targets and try to meet those targets the same way you run a business. It means that they now have the power to hire and fire their employees. So, we are increasingly making the Revenue Service a professional body.”
The Governor further stated that his administration’s success in increasing the state’s internally generated revenue is not from raising taxes but from widening the tax net, plugging leakages, and leveraging technology.
“We have ensured that all payments are properly captured and remitted to government coffers, ending revenue losses to cash transactions.”
“Let me be clear, we have not increased any tax in Enugu State. What we have essentially done and which is impacting our revenue growth is expansion of the tax net. We have also made sure that monies that were collected in cash before now are now adequately captured and paid into the state coffers,” Mbah said.
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