The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee has instructed Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) to compute and transfer the Value Added Tax on commissions earned from Remita transactions between 2015 and 2022 to the Federal Government.
Remita is a financial gateway technology utilized by the Federal Government for channeling revenue collected from Ministries, Departments, and Agencies into the Treasury Single Account.
Under the leadership of Bamidele Salam, who represents the Ede South/Ede North/Ejigbo/Egbedore Federal Constituency in Osun State, the committee issued this order on Thursday amidst an investigation into possible revenue losses through the Remita platform.
The probe is also scrutinizing cases of failure to adhere to standard procedures and other related service agreements.
The committee expressed worries regarding the failure to remit VAT during the early stages of the Remita transactions. Mr. Ahmed Liman, the Executive Director at GTB, acknowledged that the bank had not paid the VAT for a period of eight years.
“We believe that Remita is responsible for distributing the commission fees between the payment-receiving parties. In our understanding, we assumed Remita had done the necessary remittance before sharing the fees.”
Mr. Liman also discussed the fee collection process at the initial stage of Remita transactions, pointing out that the bank applies a 0.75 percent charge on users of the Remita system. Additionally, he mentioned that in 2018, the bank received N254.49 million from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation via Remita.
The committee instructed GTB to calculate and transfer the VAT on commission fees earned via the platform from 2015 to 2022 into the Federal Government’s recovery accounts held at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Representatives from several other banks, such as Keystone, Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, Polaris Bank, FCMB, Ecobank, and Wema, also appeared before the committee regarding the same issue.
The committee has directed these banks to its reconciliation sub-committee to address discrepancies in their submissions. They are expected to resolve the issues and will receive a new date to return before the committee.
