The House of Representatives will soon commence investigations into the allegations of unremitted stamp duties taxes to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) by the Nigerian Postal Services (NIPOST), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and some Commercial Banks.
This was the resolution reached by the House on Thursday during plenary sequel to the adoption of a motion under matters of urgent public importance moved by Goni Lawan, Member representing Busari/Gaidam/Yunusari federal constituency of Yobe State.
Lawan lamented that the federal government has lost trillions of Naira consequent upon unremitted monies accrued from stamp duties.
While moving the motion, Lawan said, “stamp duties are statutory taxes levied on legal instruments including cheques, receipts, military commissions, licenses and land transaction documents”.
He further explained that, “Few years ago however, banks were mandated to collect stamp duties from account holders.
“While the deductible amount per bank account seems small, it cumulatively adds up to money in billions and trillions of naira a d must be subjected to the full disclosure and transparency.
“The complicit irregularities by which public institutions including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), Nigeria Postal Services(NIPOST), among others, have overtime failed to remit stamp duty taxes into the consolidated revenue account running into trillions.
“NIPOST entered into an agreement in 2014 to collect stamp duties and armed with the masters service agreement with NIPOST, the School Banking Honours (SBH) approached the Central Bank of Nigeria for authorization to engage Deposit Money Banks (DBMs) and other Stamp Duties collection agents and the CBN gave required approval.”
According to Lawan, “all efforts to get details of remittances of funds realized from stamp duty taxes through the freedom of information Act were not successful by domestic and foreign civil society organizations.
“These would have been used to pay salaries, provide infrastructure and financing economic development in the country or at least should have generated some interest in the privates where the fund is domiciled in the commercial banks.
“Due to the concern mounting over the non-remittance, it is clearly an obvious disobedience to TSA policy for the stamp duties fund to be hidden in commercial banks instead of been remitted to the TSA account”.
Johnson Agbonayinma (PDP-Edo) while supporting the motion said the issue of linkeages was serious which needed to be addressed and called for members support for the motion to see the light of the day.
Peter Akpatason(APC, Edo) said “people were deliberately violating the laws. It is a serious violation for any agency to refused to remit these funds that are supposed to be in nation’s account.
It is good for us to support this motion.
Adopting the motion, the House mandated the ad- hoc Committee to conclude the assignment within four weeks and report back to it for further legislative action.
James Kwen, Abuja
