Following the massive outcry that greeted the Access bank three months’ stamp duty recovery, the management of the bank has decided to refund the customers and pay the Federal Government instead.
Recall that the the tier-1 bank in a mail to its customers stated that it recently discovered a mistake in its operations records, whereby stamp duty charges on applicable transactions were not passed on to customers.
The bank stated that it got it wrong by debiting the customers late.
The bank in a statement to customers said: ”Stamp duty charge collection is in compliance with the finance Act 2019, (stamp duty Act, cap S8) we are required by law to to apply the act as applicable and remit all funds to the federal government.
“However, we have had our customers feedback that this charge is unwelcome especially at this time against a challenging economic backdrop. We have considered your feedback and have decided to pay the stamp duty for our customers for the affected period.
“This means that all the customers and SMES who were debited for February to April will be refunded.”
Recall that the N50 stamp duty charge was reviewed in the Federal Government’s latest finance bill which took effect earlier this year.
The revision is such that customers would be required to pay the N50 stamp duty only if their deposits or transfers exceed N10, 000.
This is against an earlier practice whereby a stamp duty of N50 for every deposit/transfer exceeding only N1, 000.
