Tax Record-Keeping in Nigeria
Educational overview only—not legal or tax advice. Verify requirements on official portals and with a qualified adviser.
Tax compliance is mostly evidence management. Revenue authorities can disallow deductions, recharacterise transactions, or impose penalties when records are missing or inconsistent. Nigerian businesses—from SMEs to multinationals—should adopt a document policy: what to store, in what format, for how long, and who owns updates after staff changes.
Minimum expectations
Keep sales and purchase invoices, bank statements, contracts, payroll registers, VAT schedules, WHT certificates, and fixed-asset registers. Cloud backups should be immutable where possible.
Digital vs paper
Scanned copies are fine if authentic, complete, and traceable to source. Email approvals should be archived with deal files.
Link to audits
When records are strong, audits are less painful. SMEs should also read Tax for SMEs.