70% of Lagos budget’ll be funded with taxes, says Fashola

Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola said yesterday that 70 per cent of the state’s 2014 budget of N489.6 billion would be funded with taxes.

Fashola who made this known at the 7th Lagos State Annual Stakeholders Conference on Taxation in Ikeja, said the remaining 30 per cent would be financed through other sources, including the monthly Federal allocation.

He said taxation has been a veritable source of revenue for the state and that it has greatly helped to promote it’s development.

“We have achieved a lot with taxation and it is better to state some facts here so that what the government and people of the state have achieved together can be better appreciated.

“In 1999, the budget of this state for the whole year was about N14 billion and at that time, our Internally Generated Revenue was just about N600 million, he said, adding that last year, “this state was able to budget half a trillion naira, specifically N507 billion and this year, we have a budget size of N489.6 billion.

“And about 70 per cent of that would be funded by the taxpaying people of this great state,” he said, adding that the increasing mobilisation of tax resources ensured that the state relied less on federal allocations to meet her needs.

He thanked Lagos residents for making sustainable development possible in the state through payment of taxes, and appealed to those evading taxes to shun the practice, urging them to join the train of development through tax payments.