The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has given his approval to a proposed property tax regulation for the city.
This decision implies that property owners in Abuja will now be required to pay property taxes. The FCT-Internal Revenue Service has already begun implementing the Capital Gains Tax in the FCT, as mandated by the Capital Gains Tax Act of 2004.
The Capital Gains Tax requires individuals to pay a ten percent tax on the total amount of profits made from selling assets in a given year.
Haruna Abdullahi, the Executive Chairman of FCT-IRS, revealed this information during a press conference in Abuja on Sunday.
Abdullahi also mentioned that the minister had authorized several important initiatives to generate revenue for the FCT.
He said, “In the last three weeks, the minister has approved some initiatives that are huge and will certainly change the dynamics in terms of the bottom line. Just the other day, we submitted a draft proposal to the minister for the FCT property tax regulation.
“The FCT-IRS Act empowers the minister to come up with a property tax regulation for the FCT. So we had a long conversation and we suggested it to the minister, and he asked us to come up with a draft regulation, which we did, and he has approved the initiative.
“So we have an inter-agency collaboration whereby we review it because the draft was just done by the FCT-IRS, but that’s not enough, you need other stakeholders. So he approved the initiative to go ahead and review the draft and then come back.
“Subsequently at the end of the day, he will sign the regulation and is gazetted and implemented. So that alone should tell you that there is a huge positive impact on the bottom line of the IGR in the city.”
