The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has set a target of N500 billion education tax collection for the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in 2021.
In a statement, the Chairman, TETFund Board of Trustees, Kashim Imam, at the 2020 TETFund/FIRS Joint Interactive Forum in Ilorin, Kwara State, said the new target was necessary as the number of beneficiary public institutions has risen to 226.
Imam said the fund was on course to surpass the N277 billion mark set for 2020, adding that as at 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.
According to him, “I am happy to report that for about two to three years now we have been in the region of N250 billion.
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“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 added.
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 Fund,” he said TETFund was not comfortable with just sustaining collection as the fund makes effort to ensure improvement in its tax collection each year.
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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 will exceed what was collected previously.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof Suleiman Bogoro, stressed the need to increase the drive for education tax collection as the COVID-19 pandemic has affected economic activities and could likely affect education tax.
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