Chairman, Tertiary Education Trust (TET) Fund Board of Trustees, Kashim Imam, said that the Fund was targeting N500 billion in Wducation Tax in 2021.
Imam, who disclosed this at the 2020 TETFund/Federsl Unland Revenue Service (FIRS) Joint Interactive Forum in Ilorin, Kwara State, said the new target was necessary as the number of beneficiary public institutions had risen to 226.
He said the Fund was on course to surpass the N277 billion mark set for 2020, adding that as of September, Education Tax collection had already hit N251 billion, and that the figure could rise up to N300 billion by the end of December 2020, a statament by the Fund quoted him to have said.
“I am happy to report that for about two to three years now we have been in the region of N250 billion.
“As at the end of September, collection was in the region of N251 billion; if we are lucky, we may actually hit N300 billion by 31st of December.
‘We have set a new target already for 2021 and that target is the sun of N500 billion. Considering the magnitude of the challenges facing tertiary education in Nigeria, we cannot afford to do less,” he stated.
Speaking on the theme of the forum titled, “New Trust in Sustaining the EDT Collection During COVID-19 Pandemic for Effective Service Delivery of the Mandate of the Fun,” he said TETFund was not comfortable with just sustaining collection “as each year the Fund makes effort to ensure improvement in its tax collection.”
In his remarks, the Executive Chairman, FIRS, Muhammad Nami, who was represented by the FIRS Director in charge of Ondo, Ekiti and Kwara, Mr Ishola Akingbode, said the agency moved from zero tax activities to perform greatly in 2013, adding that the collection for 2020 would exceed what was collected previously.
He said a lot of modalities were put in place to ensure seamless collection of the 2 per cent Education Tax collection, adding that despite being a difficult year, FIRS had put machinery in place to ensure that taxes were collected.
Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof Suleiman Bogoro, stressed the need to increase the drive for education tax collection as the COVID-19 pandemic had affected economic activities and could likely effect education tax.
Represented by the Director of Finance, Idris Saidu, he said since 2013, when Education Tax collection rose to N279 billion, FIRS had been striving to achieve the annual 2 per cent Education Tax collections.
He said the Fund was taking practical steps to put the nation on a revolutionary path of a knowledge-based economy by ensuring increase of the national research fund to N7.5, establishment of 12 centres of excellence and inauguration of a standing Committee on R&D to facilitate and accelerate the outcome of research.
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