Babajide Ogundare, a chartered tax practitioner in Lagos State, initiated a N40,000 payment to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) on behalf of his client on October 3. Although the sum was deducted from his bank account that day, the receiving agency insists that it has not reflected on their platform since then.
Ogundare used the Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) Internet banking platform to initiate the transaction facilitated by Quickteller. Quickteller, which serves as an intermediary for interbank transactions, allows customers to make payments for various services and transfer money to other bank accounts.
As a GTBank customer, Ogundare accessed Quickteller’s services directly through his bank’s digital banking platform. Quickteller told Ogundare that the transaction was successful, but FIRS says otherwise and all efforts to recover the money have been futile.
The N40,000 debited from his GTBank account.
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Ogundare told FIJ that his client had to pay another N40,000 after the one debited from his GTBank account failed to register on FIRS’ platform.
“This was the payment recognised by the FIRS for the service,” Ogundare said.
“The implication was that I couldn’t process my client’s company’s Tax Clearance Certificate. I then asked him to use part of my professional fees to do another payment. That’s the one we later worked on,” he added.
Ogundare reached out to Quickteller’s customer care service in October to lodge a complaint about the transfer. The male customer representative who attended to him initially confirmed that the record before him showed that the transfer failed.
“During the conversation, he confirmed that he could see on the screen that the transaction actually failed. I was then surprised when I was later informed that the transaction was successful via an email sent to me,” Ogundare recounted.
“I wouldn’t know why he (the customer rep) later claimed that the transaction was successful despite earlier claiming that it failed.”
The email from Quickteller sent via Interswitch, its umbrella body.
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He also visited two branches of GTBank, one inside the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and the other in Ikorodu, to report the failed transaction. Both branches promised to work on his complaint.
“The FIRS confirmed to me that the remittance did not register on its portal when I visited the office to physically inform the office of the development,” Ogundare said.
The story was still the same when he reached out to FIRS again in January.
FIJ emailed GTBank and Quickteller on Tuesday, but none responded to the inquiries on Ogundare’s missing N40,000.
Also, FIJ emailed FIRS on Wednesday, but the tax and revenue agency was yet to respond at press time.
The post Lagos Tax Practitioner’s N40,000 Missing Between FIRS, Quickteller appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.