By Sade Adewale
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Ondo State Internal Revenue Service (ODIRS) has embarked on massive awareness and sensitisation exercise among the residents of the state on the importance of paying their land use charge promptly.
The awareness campaign took place in Ondo West Local Government areas Valentino, Funbi Fagun, Sabo, motor parks, markets, among so many other streets in the town.
The Land Use Charge is a law that provides for the levying and collection of land charges and for the consolidation of all property and land based rates.
Head of Department, land use, ODIRS, Fidelis Fajugbagbe noted that the essence of the sensitization was for the people to increase the level of compliance in respect of land use charges.
He 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 would actually determine the number of projects we would 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 was collecting tenement rate, the state government collect land use, others was collecting ground rent, so there was duplicity of collections and collecting agencies.
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.
“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 have 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 three classification which are; low value, medium value and high value”.
“The high value are places like Alagbaka and Ijapo in Akure, sound city in Ondo. Medium value are places like Sunshine garden, Oba-Ile, the low value represents about 85% of residential buildings we have in the state, it varies like 1,000 naira to 3,000 naira.
The station manager, Ondo- Ademulegun tax station, Awosusi Olaniran 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 would be the one to benefit from the payment because the government would use it to provide social amenities for them.
