The Plateau state internal revenue service, an agency of the Government that is saddled with the responsibility of collecting all taxes in the state, said that it has set its sights on generating over 20 billion Naira by the end of the year 2023.

The Chairman of Plateau State Internal Revenue Service (PSIRS), Mr. Dashe Arlat, stated this while speaking to journalists on Tuesday at the quarterly media parley held at the conference room of the Revenue House in Jos Plateau.

Mr. Arlat stated that the Agency since 2015 is striving as a leading and efficient modern revenue agency in the country that promotes regulatory compliance, and standards and ensures that all collections of taxes are optimized for the well-being of Plateau People.

Highlighting the efforts of the service in terms of revenue collection, the chairman said that the revenue service has seen a steady increase from 7Billion in 2015 to generating 20 billion in 2021 with a slight drop in 2022 to 16 billion.

He, however, assured that the service was already seeing positive signs in the current year of 2023 with the revenue collection already 7Billion as of March 2023 which is an indication that the service is on a move to surpass previously generated revenue in the state.

He said in the year 2022/2023 the Revenue body has worked with the theme of developing an enthusiastic professional team, embarrassing modern processes, and technologies to deliver customer focus service that enhances compliance and revenue collection optimization.

Mr Dashe Arlat said “We have also deployed technology which is the Plateau Integrated Revenue Collection System. The new Technology assists us to work towards ensuring that taxpayers are comfortable in terms of payment and also the assessment that we put to them.”

“We use taxpayers’ unions and associations to come up with a fair assessment, ensuring voluntary compliance, accessing them within their various income reach and group them into clusters to ensure a clean revenue collection.

“That has been the drive that has scored us from 7Billion in 2015 to 20 billion in 2021 and 16 billion in 2022 despite the challenges where persons run away from tax persons.

‘The way forward in 2023, the staff of the service is motivated to work in team spirit to reengineer all the business processes and we are also encouraged by the recent report from the national bureau of Statistics that has scored the state high in terms of revenue generation.” He further stated

Mr. Dashe Arlat also urged citizens to see the payment of tax as a duty and responsibility to ensure that government, in turn, is able to deliver on its set objectives in the state.