The Home of Representatives Public Accounts Committee has directed Warranty Belief Financial institution to calculate and remit the Worth Added Tax on the fee obtained from Remita transactions between 2015 and 2022 to the Federal Authorities.
Remita is a monetary resolution gateway know-how utilized by the Federal Authorities for the gathering of income for Ministries, Departments, and Businesses into the Treasury Single Account.
The committee, chaired by Bamidele Salam, who represents Ede South/Ede North/Ejigbo/Egbedore Federal Constituency in Osun State, issued the directive on Thursday throughout an ongoing investigation into alleged income leakages via the Remita platform.
The investigation can also be analyzing cases of non-compliance with commonplace working procedures and different associated service agreements.
The committee raised considerations in regards to the non-remittance of VAT throughout the preliminary section of the Remita transactions.
GTB’s Govt Director, Mr Ahmed Liman, admitted that the financial institution had not remitted the VAT for eight years.
“We imagine that Remita is chargeable for distributing the fee charges between the payment-receiving events. In our understanding, we assumed Remita had completed the mandatory remittance earlier than sharing the charges.”
Mr. Liman additionally addressed the gathering of charges throughout the early section of Remita transactions, noting that the financial institution expenses 0.75 per cent from payers utilizing the Remita platform. He added that the financial institution obtained N254.49m from the Workplace of the Accountant Basic of the Federation via Remita in 2018.
The committee subsequently ordered GTB to calculate and remit the VAT on fee charges obtained via the platform from 2015 to 2022 into the Federal Authorities restoration accounts domiciled with the Central Financial institution of Nigeria.
Representatives from different banks, together with Keystone, Zenith Financial institution, Sterling Financial institution, Polaris Financial institution, FCMB, Ecobank, and Wema, additionally appeared earlier than the committee on the identical matter.
The committee referred these banks to its reconciliation sub-committee to resolve discrepancies of their submissions. They’re anticipated to reconcile the problems and might be given a brand new date to reappear earlier than the committee.