The Zamfara State Government has lamented that only ten out of the 400 private schools in the state pay their taxes.
This was revealed by the Chairman of Zamfara State Board of Internal Revenue, Mr. Akilu Mohammed Dama, who noted that there were over 400 registered private schools in the state but only ten are paying their taxes regularly to the state government.
The Chairman explained that the attitude of private school operators of not paying their tax to the state government is badly affecting the revenue generation capacity of the state.
According to him, during one of his interactions with the leadership of the private school operators, he asked if they usually pay their staff during holidays as it would signify their continued payment of PAYE, the leadership could not answer him in the affirmative.
Alhaji Dama lamented that the recent security measures by the state government which led to the closure of all schools in Zamfara State has no doubt affected the strength of the Internally Generation Revenue collection of the state.
“The school proprietors have been given excuses that schools in the state were not operating as usual and parents and guardians were no longer paying school fees of their children as a result of shutting down all schools some months ago,” he said.
Continuing, the chairman further stated that filling station owners also do not pay their taxes and were declining demand notice for the payment of tax to the state government, pointing out that unless the attitude of the people toward the payment of tax has been changed, the state would continue to suffer from low IGR collection.
