Nigerians who are abroad, working remotely in the country, or who serve as influencers, are going to be taxed as part of a broader measure to ensure all and sundry are brought into the tax net, according to Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms.
“If you are a remote worker, you are a worker. You work for a company, which may be American or European, and you earn a salary; you will self-declare it because if that company were to be in Nigeria, it would deduct and pay on your behalf. The obligation falls on you to self-declare,” Oyedele said at an event.
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“If you now refuse to declare, the government will see the movement of the money, and they will deem it as your income, charge you tax on it, add a penalty, and interest for the late payment. The same thing applies to influencers.”
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Nigeria has embarked on an overhaul of its many tax laws and harmonised them into four in a move to widen its revenue base, increase its share as a percentage of gross domestic product to 18 percent within three years, and provide succor for low-income households whose spending power has been eroded.
In less than four months to the kick-off of the tax laws, clarity on how the new rules will impact the citizens and corporates has led to widespread controversies, which the Oyedele-led committee is making efforts to broaden public enlightenment ahead of January 1.
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According to the tax boss, dual citizens who are living abroad are taxable if they spend six months in Nigeria, adding that the new laws make provisions for unilateral tax credits to avoid diasporans being double-taxed.
“If you spend 183 days here in Nigeria, that’s about six months in a year in Nigeria, physically, our laws say you’re tax resident here. You must pay tax on the income you earn from anywhere in the world in Nigeria. When you get back to the other country and they want to collect tax, ask them to give you a credit for the tax you paid in Nigeria,” Oyede said.
“If you spend four months in Nigeria and the remaining eight months you’re in America, you’re not tax resident here. But if you have a house here and you rent it out, we’ll collect tax on that house,” he added.
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The tax chief also stated that anyone rendering a service, including sex workers, will be taxed from January 2026 as long as an income is received, emphasising that the new tax laws don’t differentiate between what’s legitimate or not.
On capital gains, Oyedele said if what an individual sells at the capital market in a year is not more than N150 million and the gain is not more than N10 million, no tax will be paid, stressing that the new rules were intentionally designed to be progressive in all manners.
“The current system of capital gains will charge you at 10 percent. Those gains are isolated regardless of your losses. Under the new regime, we net off first, so gains less losses. When you end up with a net gain, we then have a conversation about whether you should pay tax. If those gains still make you a low-income earner, you will not pay anything – zero percent,” he said.
“We have a very robust new law on crypto. The old law says when you make gains on crypto, you pay tax on it, but people also make losses on crypto, and the law totally ignores it, and that’s not fair. Under the new regime, we take your net, gain minus losses, so you pay tax like anybody will pay tax on their income. But you have to self-declare to the authorities.”
