Kehinde Kassim & Co.
Successive amendments to Nigeria's tax framework — most recently through the Finance Act and the broader tax-reform agenda — have shifted the operating environment for both multinational and domestic businesses. For CFOs, the issue is less about understanding the policy intent and more about translating these changes into clear quarterly action.
The reforms have re-balanced obligations across three areas: corporate income tax, capital gains tax, and value-added tax. The headline change for most mid-sized businesses is the tightening of compliance expectations: the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is increasingly using analytics-driven desk examinations to flag inconsistencies between filings, withholding tax credit notes and customer/supplier returns.
This means errors that used to surface during a multi-year audit cycle are now flagged within months. For finance teams, the cost of a sloppy filing has risen materially.
First, reconcile your withholding tax credit notes against your actual ledger of receivables and payments — and chase missing notes promptly. We have seen clients lose substantial credit positions because a counterparty's misallocation went unnoticed for years.
Second, review your transfer-pricing documentation. The bar for contemporaneous documentation has risen, and a documentation gap is one of the easiest issues for FIRS to identify in a desk review.
Third, build a single reconciliation between your VAT returns and your statutory accounts. Multi-jurisdictional clients increasingly find that the data sources feeding their VAT filings are not the same as those feeding their audited accounts — which creates exposure that auditors are now obliged to surface.
The cost of a sloppy filing has risen materially. Finance teams that previously treated tax compliance as a year-end activity now need a quarterly rhythm.
Our tax practice supports clients across all four areas above — from pre-audit readiness exercises and withholding tax recovery work to ongoing strategic planning that minimizes exposure ahead of the year. If you are uncertain where you stand, a focused diagnostic is usually the right starting point.
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