Reps seek AGF’s advice on N123bn TETFund deductions

Detailed summary

The House of Representatives is seeking the AGF’s legal advice on a dispute between the NRS and TETFund over N123.48bn deducted from Education Tax. Read More:…

The House of Representatives has waded into a dispute between the Nigeria Revenue Service and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund over N123.48bn deducted as cost of collection from Education Tax revenues between 2012 and 2024.

Consequently, the House Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Bamidele Salam (Accord, Osun), has resolved to seek the legal opinion of the Attorney-General of the Federation to determine whether the four per cent deduction applied by the NRS to Education Tax collected from oil companies was lawful.

The dispute followed an audit query by the Auditor-General for the Federation, which identified discrepancies between the Education Tax collected by the revenue agency and the amount remitted to TETFund.

At a hearing of the committee on Wednesday, representatives of both agencies presented conflicting interpretations of the provisions governing the deduction, with TETFund insisting that the NRS had overcharged it, while the revenue service maintained that its deductions were consistent with the law.

TETFund’s Director of Finance and Accounts, Dr Gloria Olotu, told the committee that the four per cent cost-of-collection provision applied only to non-oil revenue and should not extend to the entire Education Tax collected from companies in both the oil and non-oil sectors.

She said the Fund’s review of the deductions, following the Auditor-General’s query, revealed that the NRS had “applied the charge to the total Education Tax collection without excluding the oil revenue component.”

According to her, “calculations based on figures supplied by the NRS, which showed the oil and non-oil components of the collections, established that excess deductions between 2012 and 2024 amounted to N123,486,953,796.24.”

Olotu said TETFund had written several letters to the revenue agency seeking a refund and resolution of the disagreement but had yet to receive a favourable response.

However, an Executive Director representing the NRS, Shettima Tamadi, rejected the demand for…

Opening of the article, excerpted from Punch. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.