Reps indicts GTBank over failures to Remit VAT on Remita transactions for 8 years

The Nigerian House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has asked Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) to calculate and remit the Value Added Tax (VAT) on the commission received from Remita from 2015 to 2022, to the federal government recovery accounts.

Remita is a financial solution gateway technology used by the federal government for collection of revenue for Ministries, Departments and Agencies to the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

The Committee chaired by Rep. Bamidele Salam gave the directive on Thursday during the ongoing investigation into alleged revenue leakages through REMITA platform and non-compliance substantively with standard operating procedure and other allied service agreements.

The committee raised two issues on evidence of remittance of VAT components of Remita collections and collection of fees in the first Regime of the Remita transaction.

The Executive Director of GTB, Mr Ahmed Liman said the bank didn’t remit the VAT for the period of 8 years.

“We believe that Remita is saddled with the responsibility of sharing the commission fees between the payment receiving parties.

“In our mind, we think Remita has done the needful before sharing the fees between the parties.”

The Executive Director also reacted to the second issue on the collection of fees in the first Regime of the Remita transaction, he said that the bank charges 0.75 per cent on all the payers who used the Remita platform.

He added that the bank received N254,489,013 from the Accountant General through Remita in 2018.

The Committee unanimously ordered the Guarranty Trust Bank to Calculate and remit the Value Added Tax (VAT) on the commission fees received from the platform from 2015 to 2022 to the federal government recovery accounts domiciled with the Central Bank on Nigeria (CBN).

Other Banks that appeared before the committee on the same issues were Keystone, Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, Polaris Bank, FCMB, Ecobank and Wema.

The committee referred the aforementioned banks to the reconciliation sub-committee in order to address the discrepancies that were noted.

They are expected to reconcile the issues and get a new date to re-appear before the committee.