AN EXAMINATION OF THE REVENUE PROFILES OF STATE

This study examined the revenue profiles of state governments in South-Western Nigeria. A simple random sampling technique, incorporated with the Slovin formular, was used to select 356 respondent’s tax officers, 353 taxpayers through structured questionnaires administered. Approved budgets of the selected states from 2002 to 2011 were used for secondary data collection respectively. The descriptive statistics results showed that Ekiti state has the minimum generated revenue of co-efficient 0.10 and the least stable with standard deviation (SD) value of 2.71. On the average, the maximum revenue is generated by Lagos state with co efficient of 16.25 followed by Ondo state with coefficient of 11.94. Revenue generation in Ondo state is least stable with SD of 0.404 compared to that of Lagos state with SD of 0.391. Ogun state,though ranked third in revenue performance in South Western Nigeria with coefficient of 7.63 has the most stable revenue profile with SD of 0.177. The study concluded that value added tax ( VAT) has the tendency to enhance the revenue profiles of the sampled states.Hence, policy makers efforts should be aimed at increasing the base, minimise avoidance and evasion of VAT