Reps Public Account Committee orders GTBank to remit VAT on Remita commission from 2015-2022

The House of Representatives has asked Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) to remit value-added tax on the commission received from Remita between 2015 and 2022 to the federal government recovery account. The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Bamidele Salam (PDP- Osun), gave the directive on Thursday during the ongoing investigation into alleged revenue leakages through the Remita platform. The committee is also investigating non-compliance with the standard operating procedure and other related matters. Remita is a financial technology used by the federal government to collect revenue from government agencies into the Treasury Single Account (TSA). Mr Bamidele’s directive followed a unanimous resolution of the committee after scrutinising the records and listening to the bank’s management.

GTB executive director Ahmed Liman said the bank did not remit the VAT for a period of eight years. He said the bank believed Remita had deducted the VAT before sharing commissions with the bank. “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,” he said. The executive director said the bank charged 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. Other banks whose records are to be scrutinised by the committee include Keystone, Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, Polaris Bank, FCMB, Ecobank and Wema. NAN