By: Tolulope Oluwole
Ondo State Internal Revenue Service (ODIRS) on Friday 29th July, 2022, embarked on massive awareness and sensitisation of residents of Ondo West local government area on the importance of paying their land use charge promptly.
The awareness campaign took place on land use charge around Valentino street, Funbi Fagun street, Sabo, motor parks in the city, markets, among so many other streets in Ondo town.
The land use charge is a law that provide for the levying and collection of land charges and for the consolidation of all property and land based rates.
Mr Fidelis Fajugbagbe, Head of Department, land use, Ondo state internal revenue service, noted that the essence of the sensitization is for the people to increase the level of compliance in respect of land use charges.
Fajugbagbe said, “the level of compliance is fine but we want something better because at the end of the year, we are contemplating on coming to this place to do a lot of community impacting projects and the level of compliance will actually determine the number of projects we will be able to do here.
“In Ondo West local government, the compliance level of residential buildings has not been too encouraging. Then we have issues where people have been given bills of 4 years or 6 years and they are telling us that they want to pay 1 year at a time, so we are passing a message to them now that they can pay a year at a time, we are making it convenient for our people to pay as they want.
“Before the advent of this land use charge, we are doing, the local government collect tenement rate, the state government collect land use, others collect ground rent, so there was duplicity of collections and collecting agencies”.
Fajugbagbe said that “In 2014, the government of the day then brought all these things together to have a single collection, so that it will be shared to all the agencies that are supposed to have part of that payment, so once the land use payment is made, it covers tenement rate, ground rent, land use.
“And what we do is, ODIRS is just a collecting agency for the state and local governments at intervals of 6 months, we call all the local governments and share all the money to them and the state, based on the agreed percentages. So what we take is just the cost of collection.
“On its own, ODIRS does community impact programmes in all the local government areas where the level of compliance is high and we usually invite the communities and within our limited budget, we do a little we can, it might be street light, it might be grading of roads or boreholes, just to show our appreciation that they are complying with payment (of land use charge) and it goes a long way because in some local governments, we have been able to build some small projects and this has encouraged other people to come on board. In a situation where you are given a bill of 6 years and it’s only one year you can afford to pay, we will reach out to our people and give you the bill of 1 year and when next you are ready, we call you again to make another payment or you finish the payment”.
Fajugbagbe implored the people to pay their taxes as there are so many things for the government to do but the finances are never enough, so their payment, irrespective of the amount counts.
His words “We appeal to our people to support us, pay up the little you have, help us in driving this. We promise to communicate everything they’ve told us to the appropriate quarters and there will be differences in our infrastructure”.
Fajugbagbe stressed that the bill comes in various forms, depending on the classification of the area, there are 3 classification which are; low value, medium value and high value. The high value’s own are places like Alagbaka in Akure, Ijapo, sound city, Ondo. Medium value’s own are places like sunshine garden, Oba ile, the low value’s own represents about 85% of residential buildings we have in the state, it varies like 1,000 naira to 3,000 naira.
Mr Awosusi Olaniran Samuel, the station manager, Ondo- Ademulegun tax station urged the people to pay their land use charge which is between 1 thousand naira and 10,000 naira for the growth of the state.
“Our people will be the one to benefit from the payment because the government will use it to provide social amenities for them. He advised Ondo State citizens to pay their taxes,” Awosusi said.
