Creating Tax Administration Capacities Through Strategic Human Capital Development: Evidence From Kwara Irs

This paper is a Tax Administrator’s experience sharing on the modalities for creating tax administration capacities using strategic human capital development. It is based on the three years’ experience of the particular tax administrator at a State Internal Revenue Service (SIRS) in the North Central Region of Nigeria. The paper examined the strategic human capital development (SHCD) methodology of the SIRS in the creation of the tax administration capacities required at all levels of management (low, middle and top) of the SIRS under focus. The SIRS identified the need for human capital development from its inception and built into its process the SHCD methodology of five layers, namely; entry training programme (of 3 months) for all staff, the monthly field feedback and training (of a day monthly) for all staff, directorates’ regular technical training, professional trainings, and leadership and management trainings (both local and international). These schedule trainings have become a closely knitted SHCD that has improved the skills and capacities of the employees of the SIRS. To ascertain the extent to which the above have impacted on the employees in terms of readiness for change and service excelelnce, the study appraises the set of staff employed in the first two years of operations with a set of questionnaires applied to 642 staff of KW-IRS present at a particular month field feedback/training session. The findings revealed that the SHCD, as adopted by the SIRS, is instrumental to the successful start-up of the SIRS after its establishment by law in 2015, and the improved performance of the Service that has become a basis for several studies and commendations/accolades received. This paper is therefore significant given that it examined the impact of the strategic human capital development methodology in creating tax administration capacities in the SIRS.