Generating Revenue through Property Tax: The Implication on the Attitude of Commercial Property Occupiers in Jos North Local Government

Abstract

Property tax is gradually becoming a major source of revenue for local councils in Nigeria. However, in generating revenue through property tax there is the need for local councils to consider the attitude of the residents within their jurisdiction to payment of the property tax in order to encourage public participation in the usage and the collection of the property tax. The methodology of study therefore is based on the questionaire distribution of 0.00035% of the population of the study and analysed with multivariate analysis. The multivariate analysis examined the payment of property tax as an independent variable against three dependent variables which are Awareness of Property tax, willingness to pay if property tax is splited into forms and willingness to reside or shift location if the property tax is reviewed upward. The result of the study suggest that with a calculated alpha level of 0.024 which is less than 0.05, commercial property occupants in this local government will shift location if the property tax is reviewed upward. It is the recommendation of the study therefore, that there will be the need for local government to set up a machinery to monitor the attitude of the residents as this findings may be different in other local government areas.