Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank, United Bank for Africa and 8 other deposit money banks in the country paid more to the government in taxes in 2018 compared to what they paid in 2017 as their profits soared at the end of the last financial year.
According to LEADERSHIP investigation, the 2018 financial results of the banks showed that they had paid in N160.67 billion in taxes last year.
The amount paid as taxes by the 11 banks, Guaranty Trust Bank, FBN Holdings Plc, Zenith Bank, Ecobank Transnational, Sterling Bank, Wema Bank, First City Monument Bank, Access Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Fidelity Bank and United Bank for Africa, last year was higher than N140.23 billion that had been paid in 2017.
Zenith Bank was the highest tax payer last year, putting N34.209 billion into the government coffers followed by ETI, which had paid N33.61 billion as taxes while GTB paid N30.94 billon as income tax in 2018.
The tax paid by Zenith Bank had risen by 60.6 per cent from N21.178 billion which it paid out in 2017 while the income tax paid by ETI had gone up by 80.7 per cent from 18.6 billion which it paid in 2017.
For GTBank, the amount paid as income tax had risen slightly by 3.9 per cent from N29.77 billion which it paid the previous year.
The income tax paid by UBA had also risen slightly from N26.67 billion in 2018 to N28.15 billion in 2018, a 5.5 per cent increase. Stanbic IBTC had also paid N13.71 billion as income tax in 2018 compared to N12.78 billion which it paid in 2017.
Meanwhile, ETI contributed the largest portion of the N985.27 billion that was recorded by the 11 banks as profit after taxation. The combined profit of the banks had grown by 9.3 per cent compared to N901.11 billion that they jointly made in 2017.
In spite of a 14.5 per cent decline in profit after tax, ETI recorded the largest profit, raking in N249.01 billion at the end of the 2018 financial year compared to N291.26 billion that it made in 2017.
It was followed on the profitability scale by Zenith Bank which grew its profit by 11.3 per cent from N173.79 billion made in 2017 to N193.42 billion.
GTB also made N184.63 billion profit during the year having grown its profit by 9.95 per cent while Access Bank which recently concluded its merger with Diamond Bank had pulled in a profit after tax of N94.98 billion, a 58 per cent improvement over N60.08 billion which it recorded as profit in 2017.
Other major contributors to the profit pool include UBA which made N78.6 billion, Stanbic IBTC which made N74.44 billion and FBN holdings which recorded a profit after tax of N59.74 billion.
Total assets of the 11 banks rose to N42.26 trillion as at December 31, 2018 from N34.57 trillion which it was at the end of the 2017 financial year.
The top five biggest banks in terms of assets base are ETI which had grown its asset base to N8.22 trillion followed by Zenith Bank and FBN Holdings which has asset base of N5.95 trillion and N5.56 trillion respectively.
Access Bank’s asset bans as at December 31, 2018, before its merger with Diamond Bank was the fourth largest at B4.95 trillion followed by UBA with an asset base of N4.86 trillion and GTBank with N3.28 trillion in asset base.
