Back to blog

Nigeria Tax Compliance Checklist for Small Businesses 2026

Taxidy
10 min read
Nigeria Tax Compliance Checklist for Small Businesses 2026

Running a small business in Nigeria and staying tax compliant are not two separate things anymore. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025, which took effect January 1, 2026, introduced a unified framework that brought every business obligation into one place. This checklist covers every tax requirement a small Nigerian business must meet across the year, from registration to monthly filings to annual returns, with the deadlines, penalties, and filing platforms for each one.

Quick Summary

  • Registration — your business must have a TIN, be registered with CAC, and be VAT-registered if turnover exceeds ₦25 million
  • Monthly obligations — VAT returns by the 21st, PAYE by the 10th, WHT by the 21st for companies
  • Annual obligations — CIT return within six months of year end, annual PAYE return by January 31, self-assessment by March 31 for individuals
  • Record keeping — the law requires you to keep records for a minimum of six years
  • Small company exemptions — if your turnover is ₦100 million or less, you pay zero CIT, zero CGT, and zero Development Levy, but you must still file

Running a small business is already a full-time job. Staying on top of tax compliance while also managing customers, staff, suppliers, and cash flow is the kind of thing that quietly falls to the bottom of the list until it becomes urgent.

The problem is that in Nigeria, tax compliance becoming urgent usually means it has already become expensive.

The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 brought the most significant change to how Nigerian businesses are taxed in a generation. From January 1, 2026, the rules changed, the penalties got steeper, and the NRS gained digital tools that cross-reference your bank records, payroll data, and tax filings automatically. The window for things to slip through unnoticed is significantly narrower than it was two years ago.

This checklist is designed to be a practical reference. Go through it, check what your business has in place, identify what is missing, and use it as the foundation for a system that keeps you compliant throughout the year.

Part 1: Registration — Get the Basics in Place

Before any filing obligation matters, your business needs to be properly registered in the tax system. If any of these are missing, everything else builds on a shaky foundation.

Business registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission

Your business must be registered with the CAC before it can engage in formal commerce. For a company, this gives you a CAC registration number which functions as your Tax Identification Number for business purposes under the NTA 2025. For a sole proprietorship or partnership, the individual owner's NIN serves as the TIN.

Tax Identification Number

Every taxable person and entity must have a TIN. For companies, this comes automatically through CAC registration. For individuals running unregistered businesses, your NIN is your TIN. You can verify or retrieve your TIN through the joint tax board portal at taxid.jrb.gov.ng.

VAT registration

If your business has an annual turnover of ₦25 million or more, you are legally required to register for VAT with the NRS. Once registered, you must charge 7.5% VAT on applicable goods and services, collect it from your customers, and remit it to the NRS monthly. If your turnover is below ₦25 million, VAT registration is not required and you should not be charging VAT on your invoices.

State IRS registration

For PAYE and personal income tax purposes, you must also be registered with the Internal Revenue Service in the state where your business operates. Lagos businesses register with the LIRS. Abuja businesses register with the FCT-IRS. Every state has its own IRS.

Part 2: Monthly Obligations — What Must Happen Every Month

These repeat every month without exception. Missing them is where most small businesses accumulate their biggest compliance debts.

VAT return — due the 21st of every month

If your business is VAT-registered, you must file a VAT return covering all VAT collected and VAT paid during the previous month by the 21st of the following month. The return goes to the NRS Self-Service Portal at nrs.gov.ng. You pay the difference between VAT collected from customers and VAT you paid on business inputs. If you paid more VAT on inputs than you collected, you are entitled to a refund or credit.

Penalty for late filing: ₦100,000 for the first month, ₦50,000 for every subsequent month.

PAYE remittance — due the 10th of every month

If you have employees, you deduct PAYE from their salaries every month and remit the total to the relevant State IRS by the 10th of the following month. You file through your State IRS portal. Lagos employers use etax.lirs.gov.ng.

Penalty for failure to deduct: 40% of the amount not deducted. Penalty for late remittance: 10% of the amount plus CBN MPR interest.

Withholding Tax — due the 21st of every month for companies

When your company makes payments for rent, professional fees, dividends, or contract services, you deduct WHT before paying the vendor and remit it to the NRS by the 21st of the following month. After remitting, you issue a WHT credit certificate to the vendor. Without that certificate, the vendor cannot claim the WHT as a tax credit.

Penalty for failure to deduct: 40% of the amount not withheld.

Tracking monthly VAT, PAYE, and WHT deadlines alongside running your business is exactly the kind of thing that leads to missed filings and compounding penalties. Taxidy is building the platform that keeps every Nigerian business ahead of every deadline. Join the waitlist.

Part 3: Annual Obligations — What Must Happen Every Year

Annual PAYE return — due January 31

If you have employees, you must file an annual PAYE return with your State IRS by January 31st every year. This return covers all salaries paid and all PAYE deducted across the previous year. It is separate from your monthly remittances and mandatory even if all monthly payments were made on time and correctly.

The return must include the name and TIN of every employee, their gross compensation, the PAYE deducted, and their net pay. Filing must be done electronically through your State IRS portal.

Companies Income Tax return — due within six months of your financial year end

Every registered company must file its CIT return within six months of the end of its accounting year. For companies with a December year end, this means filing by June 30th of the following year. If your year ends in March, your deadline is September 30th.

This obligation applies even if your business qualifies for the 0% small company rate and owes no tax. Filing a nil return is how you prove compliance. Not filing because you owe nothing is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes small business owners make.

Penalty for late filing: ₦100,000 for the first month, ₦50,000 for every month after.

Capital Gains Tax — due June 30 or December 31

If your business sold a chargeable asset during the year, whether land, a building, equipment, or shares, you must report the gain and pay any applicable CGT. The deadline is June 30th for disposals between January and June, and December 31st for disposals between July and December.

Small companies with turnover under ₦100 million are exempt from CGT on business asset sales. But you must still be able to demonstrate that you qualify for the exemption.

Part 4: Record Keeping — The Foundation Everything Rests On

Under Section 102 of the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025, every business is required to maintain adequate books and records that accurately reflect its financial position and transactions. These records must be kept for a minimum of six years from the end of the relevant tax year.

The NRS can request these records at any time during an audit. If you cannot produce them, you face a penalty of ₦50,000 for individuals and ₦200,000 for companies, in addition to whatever additional tax may be assessed based on the auditor's estimates.

What you need to keep: all sales invoices issued, all purchase invoices and receipts received, bank statements for all business accounts, payroll records showing calculations and deductions for every employee, WHT credit certificates for every deduction made or suffered, VAT returns and remittance receipts, all contracts with vendors and customers, and annual tax return filings and payment receipts.

The six-year requirement means that records from 2020 onward must still be available today.

Part 5: Vendor Compliance — The ₦5 Million Penalty Most Businesses Do Not Know About

From 2026, any company that awards a contract to a vendor who does not have a valid TIN faces a penalty of ₦5,000,000 per vendor. This is not the vendor's liability. It is yours.

Before engaging any supplier, contractor, or service provider, verify their TIN through the NRS portal or the joint tax board TIN verification tool at taxid.jrb.gov.ng. Make TIN verification a mandatory step in your vendor onboarding process. If a vendor cannot provide a TIN, do not engage them until they have one.

Part 6: Know Your Small Business Exemptions

If your business has annual turnover of ₦100 million or less and total fixed assets not exceeding ₦250 million, you qualify as a small company under the NTA 2025. The exemptions that come with this classification are significant:

Zero Companies Income Tax on your business profits. Zero Capital Gains Tax when selling business assets. Zero Development Levy. Exemption from deducting or suffering Withholding Tax on transactions below ₦2 million in a calendar month, provided you have a valid TIN.

These exemptions do not apply automatically and they do not remove your obligation to file. They reduce what you owe to zero while keeping your filing obligations exactly the same as any other company.

You can read more about how these exemptions work and what changed for small businesses in our article on what changed under the Nigeria Tax Act 2025.

The Compliance Calendar Summary

Print this out and stick it somewhere visible.

  • 10th of every month — PAYE remittance to State IRS
  • 21st of every month — VAT return and remittance to NRS
  • 21st of every month — WHT remittance to NRS (for companies)
  • January 31st every year — Annual PAYE return to State IRS
  • March 31st every year — Self-assessment return for individual business owners
  • June 30th — CIT return for December year-end companies
  • June 30th — CGT return for January to June asset disposals
  • December 31st — CGT return for July to December asset disposals

If you want a more detailed breakdown of every deadline with filing platform information, our Nigeria Tax Calendar 2026 covers every obligation in full.

The One Thing This Checklist Cannot Do For You

A checklist tells you what to do. It does not do it for you.

Every item on this list requires a system behind it. Someone has to calculate the VAT, prepare the PAYE, verify the vendor TINs, file the returns, and keep the records. For a small business where one person is often doing five jobs at once, this is where compliance consistently breaks down.

The businesses that stay consistently compliant are the ones that have a process for each obligation, a person responsible for it, and a reminder that fires before each deadline. Not the ones with the best intentions.

Taxidy is building the platform that takes this entire checklist and automates every part of it for Nigerian small businesses. Know what you owe, file on time, and stay compliant without adding another job to your list. Join the waitlist.

Taxidy is built by Nigerians who understand exactly how confusing this system is.

Sources: Nigeria Tax Act 2025, Sections 56, 78 to 81, 101 to 108. Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025, Sections 13, 14, 101, 102, 105. Forvis Mazars Nigeria, Navigating Nigeria's New Tax Era, December 2025. Tunde and Adisa Legal Practitioners, Know Your Taxes, September 2025. AO2 Law, Taxation of Small Companies Under the New Tax Regime, November 2025. Remote Solutions Africa, Nigeria 2026 Tax Reform, December 2025.

Ready to know your real tax position?

Upload your bank statement and see your tax estimate in minutes.

Get Started
Add Taxidy as a preferred source on Google