#PressRelease:
KWSG is creating more poor people through her burdensome tax regime -JAACK
The Joint Action Against Corruption in Kwara has described the tax regime in the state as one that is deliberately created to impoverish the people and add to their economic woes.
The group made the assertion in a statement issued in Ilorin on Tuesday by its Organising Secretary, Joe Mahmud.
The group regretted the insensitiveness of the government to the plight of the people with the arbitrary imposition of "killer taxes" on the people whose economic base are already over burdened.
"This government has again proved to residents of the state that she is insensitive to the sufferings of her citizens when it came up with an agency named Kwara Internal Revenue Service; KWIRS that is totally disconnected with the populace. KWIRS couldn't have understood the sufferings in the hinterland because its office is in the high brow Government Reserved Area (GRA) with high fence partitioning it from the people it sought to serve in the first place.
"The government needs to explain as an APC-controlled state why pupils of the Junior Secondary Schools in the state should pay as much N11,360 for an examination that its papers will be printed in the state, supervised and marked by their own teachers.
" Private school owners are equally forced to pay a whopping N100, 000 for registration of schools not minding it size and location. These are the schools that were forcefully closed down as illegal schools or learning centres not minding whether they satisfy other conditions that make a school a conducive place for teaching and learning or not.
"And that is one of the reasons we are constrained to ask that 'is this government out to auction the people?'. The tax regime is unfriendly, archaic and exploitative." It said.
The statement further advised government to make use of international best practices in her tax administration, it reads; " government can only derive good revenue from the big corporations and wealthy members of her society. Collecting money from the poor to service the comfortability of the elites is satanic and unacceptable."
The group concluded that the total disregard for civility and best practice by the agents of the KWIRS is condemnable. "It is counter productive closing down mostly subsistence sources of income in the name of generating income for the government when there are no commensurable amenities to show for what has been collected so far". It concluded.
Joe Mahmud
Organising Secretary,
Joint Action Against Corruption in Kwara
JAACK
November 1st, 2016