Introduction
Nigeria now has a published position on how virtual assets are taxed. On 31 July 2026, the Nigeria Revenue Service (“NRS” or “the Service”) issued Information Circular No. 2026/21, Guidelines on the Taxation of Virtual Assets (the “Guidelines”), and in doing so answered a set of questions that taxpayers and exchanges had been navigating largely on assumption.
The Guidelines are administrative guidance and they were issued under section 4 of the Nigeria Revenue Service Establishment Act 2025, the Ninth Schedule to the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (the “NTA”), and section 79 and the Fifth Schedule to the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 (the “NTAA”). Their function is to take charging provisions that already exist and explain how they land on virtual asset (“VA”) activity. Nothing in them creates a new tax.
The scope is wide. If one buys, sells, swaps or otherwise deals in VA; receive income or payment in VA; operate as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (“VASP”) or peer-to-peer (“P2P”) marketplace; derive Nigerian-taxable income from VA; or provide services connected to VA, they are all within the framework.
The headline is the method of computing gains, which is measured in dollars rather than Naira.
The Six Categories
Almost everything in the Guidelines turns on which category an asset falls into, because classification decides not only what tax is charged but who is responsible for collecting it.
| Category | What it covers | How it is taxed |
| Category 1 Cryptocurrencies and exchange tokens | Assets functioning as a medium of exchange, store of value or unit of account, not pegged to any currency or asset, priced by market supply and demand. Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, BNB. | Income tax on gains on disposal. Stamp duty on eligible token transfers. |
| Category 2 Stablecoins and payment tokens | Designed to hold a stable value against a fiat currency, and used as payment and settlement instruments. USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI, PYUSD. | Income tax on gains on disposal. Stamp duty on eligible token transfers. Any yield or investment return the stablecoin offers is assessed under Category 4. |
| Category 3 Security and investment tokens | Represent ownership of an economic interest in an underlying asset, enterprise or cash flow, and are regulated as securities under the Investments and Securities Act 2025. Tokenised equity, bonds, revenue-sharing and asset-backed tokens. | Income tax on gains on disposal. Stamp duty on eligible token transfers. The section 184(h) NTA exemption for stocks and shares covers tokenised Nigerian stocks and shares only — not the category as a whole. |
| Category 4 Utility and governance tokens | Give access to a product, platform or protocol, including tokens that generate yield, staking rewards or DeFi returns. Gaming and access tokens, DAO governance votes, staking derivatives, receipt tokens. | Income tax on gains on disposal. Staking rewards, DeFi yield and liquidity rewards are taxable as income at the point of receipt. |
| Category 5 NFTs | Unique digital assets. Digital art, music NFTs, collectibles, property NFTs. | Depends on economic substance and on whether the holder is a creator, an investor or a trader. |
| Category 6 Sovereign digital currency | Central bank money in digital form, denominated in the national unit of account and constituting a direct claim on the issuing central bank. The eNaira, and foreign CBDCs held by Nigerian residents. | Treated in the same way as fiat currency. Excluded from the VA framework entirely, so no VA tax obligations arise. |
How the Gain Is Computed
Illustration
Suppose one buys a Bitcoin position for ₦1,000,000 and sells it later for ₦1,970,000. On the face of it, ₦970,000 has been made. But if the Naira moved from ₦1,000 to ₦1,500 to the dollar while one were holding a good part of the sum, that is not profit at all. It is just the same asset expressed in a weaker currency. Thus, taxing the whole ₦970,000 would mean taxing even the currency’s decline.
The Guidelines deals with the above by measuring both ends of the transaction in dollars. Only then will the figure be converted into Naira, at the CBN/NAFEM rate on the disposal date, to arrive at the amount assessed to tax.
The Taxes That Apply
A single transaction can attract more than one tax. Selling a token for Naira on an exchange, for example, produces an income tax charge on the gain, a deduction at source on the gross proceeds, stamp duty borne by the buyer, and VAT on the exchange’s fee.
| Tax | Rate | How it is collected |
| Income tax on gains on disposal | Progressive rates for individuals; 30% for companies other than small companies | Self-assessed and paid by the taxpayer under the filing and payment provisions of the NTAA. |
| Deduction at source on disposal proceeds — Categories 1, 3 and 5 | 1% of gross proceeds | Withheld by the VASP or VASP-operated P2P marketplace from the tokens being disposed of. |
| Income tax on gains — Category 2 stablecoins | Progressive rates for individuals; 30% for companies | Self-assessment only. No deduction at source applies to stablecoin disposals. |
| Deduction at source on income receipts — staking, mining, airdrops, DeFi yield | 10% | Deducted by the payer. Where the payer is a non-resident or fails to deduct, the recipient declares the income and accounts for the tax on the annual return. |
| Deduction at source on consultancy and professional fees | 5% or 10% as applicable | Deducted by the payer, with the same fallback to self-assessment where the payer is a non-resident or does not deduct. |
| Stamp duty on TOKEN/FIAT and FIAT/TOKEN transfers (item 33, Ninth Schedule) | 1.5% | Withheld in token units by the VASP from the tokens credited to the transferee, and remitted by the 15th and 30th of the month. The fiat consideration is not reduced. |
| VAT on VASP service fees | 7.5% | Charged, collected and remitted by the VASP in the currency of the transaction. |
| Income tax on VASP profits | 30%, subject to section 57 of the NTA | The VASP self-assesses and files company income tax returns, separately from its collection duties. |
What Is Not Taxed
a. Holding: Simply holding a virtual asset is not a taxable event, however much it appreciates. The charge waits for a disposal.
b. Transfers between one’s own wallets: Not a disposal, provided beneficial ownership does not change. Understand that according to the guidelines, the concession is written for individuals and does not extend to companies, partnerships, trusts or other legal persons.
c. Staking lock-up: Committing assets to a staking or validation protocol to take part in network operations is not a disposal.
d. Minting an NFT: Neither income, a disposal nor a supply. Tax arrives only on the first sale for consideration.
e. Tokenising a real-world asset: Where beneficial ownership stays put, this changes the form of ownership rather than the ownership itself, so it is not a disposal.
f. Borrowing against one’s holdings: Not income. The loan creates a liability, not a gain.
g. Wrapping and DeFi receipt tokens: Converting Bitcoin into Wrapped Bitcoin, or depositing Ether in exchange for ETH, is not a disposal where one retains beneficial ownership of the underlying asset and realises no value. The cost base and holding period carry across to the new token, and unwrapping is not a disposal either.
What is taxable is what one does next: selling a wrapped or receipt token, swapping it, or using it to pay for something is a disposal. Otherwise the virtual asset or currency is not taxed.
Peer-to-Peer Trading and Remittance
This part of the Guidelines carries more weight since a great deal of local crypto activity is conducted peer-to-peer, much of it on the assumption that dealing directly with another person keeps the transaction beyond the reach of the tax authority. The Guidelines close that assumption off, and they close it more broadly than most traders will expect, because what matters is not what the arrangement is called but whether a platform stands between the parties. Where a platform holds the seller’s tokens in escrow while the buyer pays, it carries the same collection obligations as any exchange, and the position is no different where the platform merely introduces the two parties and never touches the tokens at all, since a platform that systematically facilitates these trades is treated as a VASP and must collect accordingly. That leaves only genuinely private dealing outside the net e.g a transfer from one’s wallet to another, an arrangement made over a messaging app, a trade done face to face. Even there, the obligation does not disappear, it simply moves onto the trader, who must declare the transaction and pay through self-assessment.
Obligations and Penalties
Everyone in scope must register and obtain a Tax ID. VASPs and P2P escrow operators must make a valid Tax ID a condition of activating an account under section 8 of the NTAA. Beyond that, VASPs carry the working end of the regime: deducting tax, collecting stamp duty, charging and accounting for VAT, remitting within the statutory timelines, filing the returns required under sections 11, 22, 25 and 28 of the NTAA, and keeping records under section 31 and the Fifth Schedule.
The penalties for intermediaries are severe. Failure to register costs ₦50,000 and then ₦25,000 a month; failure to file, ₦100,000 and then ₦50,000 a month. Failing to deduct attracts 40% of the amount not deducted, and failing to remit what was deducted attracts the amount itself plus 10% a year and interest at the CBN monetary policy rate. Non-payment costs 10% plus that interest on Naira transactions, or 10% plus SOFR[1] and a spread on the foreign currency. For a VASP or P2P marketplace, non-compliance opens at ₦10,000,000 for the first month and ₦1,000,000 for every month after.
What This Means in Practice
Owing to the above, the spotlight is VASPs and P2P marketplaces, who are now collecting income tax, stamp duty and VAT on other people’s transactions, withholding in tokens rather than cash, remitting in the originating token, and paying their own corporate income tax on top. Failure to do this exposes them to a penalty of ₦10,000,000.
For taxpayers, this is a record-keeping regime. The dollar computation cannot be reconstructed from Naira records after the event: the dollar price, the token quantity, the exchange rate and the date for every acquisition and every disposal are needed.
NRS Stakeholder Engagement
The NRS will be engaging stakeholders on the Taxation of Virtual Assets in Nigeria. Businesses and advisers with VA exposure should attend; the session is the right forum in which to raise the ambiguities noted above.
Date: 20 August 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Link: https://lnkd.in/e27_ifXh
[1] Secured Overnight Financing Rate