The Federal Government has begun a six week review of the tax laws that took effect at the start of the year, after businesses complained that unclear rules were disrupting corporate filings. The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele, announced the exercise on Thursday, 17 September 2026, while inaugurating a Technical Subcommittee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms in Abuja.
Oyedele, who also chairs the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, said the review would address gaps and unintended consequences that surfaced once the laws met real economic activity. He gave the panel six weeks to report, with its recommendations expected to feed into the Finance Bill 2027.
According to the minister, the exercise will examine Value Added Tax thresholds, withholding tax, capital gains treatment and multiple taxation. He said the government was moving from wholesale reform to continuous improvement, and stressed that the review was not meant to reverse what was passed in 2025.
“The real test begins when the law meets the economy, as businesses interpret it, administrators implement it, investors respond to it, and citizens experience it,” Oyedele said. He added that the task was “not to rewrite the 2025 reforms, but to preserve their fundamental principles while learning from implementation and responding to new economic realities.”
The four laws under review are the Nigeria Tax Act, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act. President Bola Tinubu signed them in 2025 and they took full effect on 1 January 2026. Together they consolidate Nigeria’s scattered tax statutes, set a uniform framework for administration across the three tiers of government, replace the Federal Inland Revenue Service with the Nigeria Revenue Service, and create a joint board to coordinate revenue authorities.
The review responds in part to pressure from the organised private sector. In June, groups including the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, the Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, the Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists, NACCIMA and the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association wrote an open letter to Tinubu warning that conflicting interpretations of the new laws had effectively paralysed corporate tax filings.
The dispute they raised centres on how to treat taxes for accounting periods that ended before 1 January 2026. The organised private sector said the General Transition Guidelines issued by the Minister of Finance provide that obligations from those earlier periods remain governed by the repealed laws, even where filing and payment fall due in 2026. On that reading, Companies Income Tax for any basis period ending before the commencement date should be computed under the old Companies Income Tax Act.
The Nigeria Revenue Service took a different position. Its Emerging Taxpayers Office in Abuja, in a notice dated 23 June 2026, directed companies yet to file for the 2026 Year of Assessment to do so under the new framework. “The applicable law for filing is determined by statute and not by taxpayer election,” the notice said, adding that the Service had “no statutory authority to process Companies Income Tax returns for the 2026 Year of Assessment under the repealed Companies Income Tax Act.” That gap between a ministerial guideline and the collecting agency’s reading is the practical problem the panel now inherits.
The private sector groups were careful to frame their complaint as support, not opposition. “This Open Letter is not an attack on tax reform or lawful revenue mobilisation,” they wrote, describing their members as “willing and ready taxpayers” seeking a clear and functional way to file.
The stakes for compliance are real. VAT is charged at 7.5 per cent, a rate the 2025 reforms retained despite earlier proposals to raise it, and it is now collected and remitted to the Nigeria Revenue Service. Several advisory notes have also flagged discrepancies between the gazetted texts and the versions lawmakers say they passed, particularly around the turnover threshold that defines a small company, which is one reason clarity matters to firms trying to work out what they owe.
Oyedele said the public call for input drew 134 submissions from across the six geopolitical zones. He listed the recurring proposals as clearer VAT thresholds, curbs on multiple taxation, better coordination among revenue bodies, greater digitalisation and data sharing so taxpayers stop resubmitting information government already holds, stronger taxpayer rights, faster refunds and safeguards for small businesses.
He urged the subcommittee to weigh the economic impact of any change, especially on low income households, workers and small firms. “Every tax reform produces winners and losers; the question is whether a policy is fair, efficient and competitive, not whether it is popular with everyone,” he said.
The subcommittee is chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, with the Chairman of the Tax Advisory Committee, Albert Folorunsho, as co-chair. Its members are drawn from the revenue and finance agencies, the Central Bank, the Debt Management Office, professional accounting and tax bodies, the organised private sector and the four largest accounting firms. Beyond the Finance Bill 2027, it is to review the withholding tax regulations and the framework for taxing companies with a significant economic presence in Nigeria.