Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola last Tuesday called on professional bodies to assist the state government in its effort to bring more professionals into the tax net.

The governor made the call while speaking at a “Stakeholders Conference for Professionals “organised by the Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) in Lagos.

He said that professionals constituted an important taxable group in the state, but regretted that their tax remittances to the state had been unimpressive.

Fashola said that poor salary workers made up the highest number of tax payers, a situation, which he said, was not  good enough in view of the fact that professionals earned more.

‘I think that the professional associations constitute a critical mass for us and I am appealing to them to go back and tell their members to pay their taxes and contribute their share to this common wealth.

“I think with that we can expand our tax net and can do a lot more than we have done, “ he said.

Fashola said that government could not function properly or deliver development without taxes which oiled many great economies of the world.

He said the N8 billion monthly federal allocations to the state could only settle its wage bill, noting that development projects across the state were mainly funded with taxes.

Fashola urged defaulters to file in their tax returns, but added the government was giving a grace of two weeks for compliance after which it would take necessary actions.

“ I want to use this meeting to give those people time to respond so we would hold on until Friday, April 12, after that we would have to do our job.

“We feel that between now and April 12, those who want to be on the right side of the law will comply,’ he said.

Fashola said that 1090 of the 2019 registered hotels had yet to comply with the state‘s Consumption and Hospitality Tax Law of 2010.

According to him, 634 have complied while 82 are challenging the legality of the law in court.

The governor said that the law only required the hotels to charge extra on the consumption of their services, pointing out that the burden was not really on them.

Fashola wondered why some hotels were opposed to the law, saying the essence was simply to take from the rich and give the poor the basic services.

Mr Bola Shodipo, Special Adviser to the Governor on Taxation, said that the number of tax payers in the state had grown from 2.9 million persons to 3.1million.

He described the increase as encouraging, but said that the new people in the tax net were mainly low earners.

The Tide source reports that representatives of professional bodies at the meeting were ICAN, NBA, NACCIMA and Actors Guild, among others.