Nigeria Widens Tax Net for Cryptocurrency Transactions

Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service has introduced guidelines to bring virtual assets into its formal tax framework. This move targets cryptocurrency and stablecoin transactions, as well as corporate income tax on these firms.

The new rules impose transaction-level duties and withholding levies on Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) and require tax identification numbers for new cryptocurrency account activations. Corporate income tax is set at 30% for cryptocurrency firms.

This move aims to capture a significant portion of Nigeria's active digital asset market, which has an estimated $56 billion in annual peer-to-peer transaction volume. However, critics argue that layering transaction-level taxes on top of existing network fees may drive users towards unregulated channels.