Abuja – Nigeria has collected over USD 120 million in Value Added Tax (VAT) from non-resident digital service suppliers over three years, an outcome of the country’s efforts to strengthen the taxation of the digital economy using practical, African developed tax solutions, the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) reports.
As a founding member of ATAF, Nigeria has actively contributed to and benefited from the organisation’s technical work. Drawing on ATAF’s VAT Digital Services Toolkit for Africa and other VAT policy products, Nigeria introduced reforms that strengthened the taxation of digital services, including place of supply rules and a simplified compliance regime for non-resident suppliers.
According to Mathew Osanekwu, Director of Investigations at the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), these reforms enabled Nigeria to collect VAT from non-resident digital service providers, generating USD 21 million in 2023, between USD 40 and 43 million in 2024, and between USD 56 and 68 million in 2025. 
Osanekwu, who joined the ATAF technical committee in 2018, explained how the organisation’s products supported Nigeria’s tax reform journey.
“The technical committee is now metamorphosed into what we call ITC, indirect tax technical committee. Also members of the team that develop over a technical papers and policy consideration for Africa in relation to VAT. And because of my presence in those committee, we have written a lot of reports to our management in Nigeria and that has also assisted us in drafting our legislation in relation to VAT,” he said.
He said the key game changer was the VAT digital toolkit for Africa, which assisted in collecting VAT from non-resident suppliers on cross border transactions.
“So, some of the provision includes the place of supplier rule, time of supplier rule, withholding VAT, and also we also we are going to introduce what we call the simplified and compliance regime for non-resident suppliers where we are able to collect VAT from from companies like Amazon, Facebook, Netflix that have not paid VAT or remitted VAT to Nigeria in in all this while,” he said.
“So from 2023, the numbers are very very appealing. 2023 we are able to collect about 39 billion naira which is about $21 million in 2023. 2024 we have to collect about 70 0.63 billion naira which is about 40 to 43 uh million dollars. In 2025, from non-resident suppliers alone, we are able to collect 79 billion naira, which is about uh going to about 56 to 68 million dollars.”
Osanekwu said the products assisted in revamping Nigeria’s tax landscape, leading to the development of four new tax laws, namely the Nigerian Tax Act, the Nigerian Tax Administration Act, the Nigerian Revenue Service Establishment Act, and the Joint Revenue Board Establishment Act.
He revealed that VAT collections have grown dramatically over the years.
“2019 we were able to collect 1.1 trillion from VAT alone and that has increased to about 8.6 trillion naira in 2025. So proud to now total collection from VAT account about 22%. But because of all this performs, the VAT contribution account will be about 30 to 32%,” he said.
ATAF’s VAT products also informed broader VAT policy reforms and supported the design and implementation of e-invoicing in Nigeria.
“And we have started ruling out the invoice mechanism for large tax payers and very soon we medium tax payers and small emerging tax payers we follow suit. So in the overall we see that all these products are added value. The VAT policy of insurance services, VAT policy on specialized businesses and several of those products as actually are sitting in Nigeria in vamping our Nigerian last landscape,” Osanekwu said.
