Reps to probe unremitted stamp duties into federation account

The House of Representatives has resolved to probe unremitted Stamp Duties worth trillions of Naira into the Federation Account.
The House made the decision at plenary on Thursday, following a motion sponsored by Hon. Goni Lawan.
Moving the motion, the lawmaker noted that stamp duties were statutory taxes levied on legal instruments including cheques, receipts and land transaction documents.
He disclosed that few years ago, banks were mandated to collect stamp duties from account holders.
He said that while the deductible amount per bank account seemed small, it cumulatively added up to money in trillions of Naira.
Lawan raised alarm over complicit irregularities by which public institutions including the Central Bank of Nigeria Nigeria Interbank Settlement System and Nigeria Postal Service had failed to remit stamp duties into the federation account.
He argued that the collected duties must be subjected to the full conditions of disclosure and transparency.
He said: “All efforts to get details of the remittance of funds realised from Stamp Duty Taxes through the freedom of information Act were not successful by domestic and foreign civil society organisations.”
He said that the unremitted funds would have been used to pay salaries, provide infrastructure or for finance economic development which would have generated some interest.
The lawmaker said it was obvious disobedience to Treasury Single Account policy for stamp duties fund to be hidden in commercial banks instead of being remitted to the TSA.
In his contribution, Hon. Johnson Agbonayinma said the issue of leakages was a serious one and needed to be addressed and called on members to support the motion.
Hon. Peter Akpatason said some agencies were deliberately violating the laws which shouldn’t be.
Akpatason said: “It is a serious violation for any agency to refuse to remit these funds that are supposed to be in the nation’s account. It is good for us to support this motion.”
Speaker of the house, Yakubu Dogara, said the banks were sitting on the monies.
The Deputy Speaker, Lasun Yussuff, said what the banks were doing was wrong. He commended the mover of the motion and called for more investigation.
The motion was unanimously adopted by members when it was put to a voice vote by the speaker.
The House, therefore, resolved to set up an ad -hoc Committee to urgently investigate the non -remittance of trillions of Naira into the federation account of TSA.
The committee is expected to turn in its report within four weeks for further legislative action.