The House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee has instructed Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) to calculate and remit the Value Added Tax (VAT) on commissions received from Remita transactions spanning 2015 to 2022 to the Federal Government.
Remita is a financial solution gateway technology utilized by the Federal Government for collecting revenue for Ministries, Departments, and Agencies into the Treasury Single Account.
The directive, issued by the committee led by Bamidele Salam, who represents Ede South/Ede North/Ejigbo/Egbedore Federal Constituency in Osun State, came during an ongoing investigation into alleged revenue leakages associated with the Remita platform.
The investigation is also scrutinizing issues related to non-compliance with standard operating procedures and other service agreements.
The committee expressed concerns about the non-remittance of VAT during the initial phase of Remita transactions. GTBank’s Executive Director, Mr. Ahmed Liman, admitted that the bank had failed to remit the VAT for 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.”
During the session, Mr. Ahmed Liman of GTBank also discussed the fees collected during the early phase of Remita transactions, specifying that the bank charges a 0.75 percent fee from users of the platform. He revealed that in 2018 alone, GTBank received N254.49 million from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation via Remita.
Following this, the committee directed GTBank to calculate and remit the VAT on all commission fees received through the Remita platform from 2015 to 2022 into the Federal Government’s recovery accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Representatives from other banks, including Keystone, Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, Polaris Bank, FCMB, Ecobank, and Wema, also appeared before the committee regarding similar issues. The committee has referred these banks to its reconciliation sub-committee to address discrepancies in their submissions. They will need to resolve these issues and will be scheduled to reappear before the committee at a later date.
