VAT, PAYE, WHT and company income tax, what each one actually is, when each is due, and how a small company keeps up without hiring a tax team.
Nobody starts a company because they love remittance schedules. But the schedules exist, the penalties are real, and most of the fear around Nigerian tax is really just unfamiliarity. Here is the whole picture for a small company, in the order the money moves.
A caution before we start: this is orientation, not advice. Rates and thresholds shift, and the recent tax reforms changed several of them. Confirm your specifics with a professional or the law itself before filing.
Value added tax is charged on most goods and services you sell. The customer pays it, you hold it, and you remit it. The standard rate has been 7.5 percent. If you are registered for VAT, the VAT you paid on business purchases can offset the VAT you collected, and you remit the difference.
The rhythm: file and remit by the 21st of the month after the sale. Miss it and penalties stack monthly. The practical trap is treating collected VAT as revenue and spending it. It was never your money.
Pay As You Earn is your employees income tax, deducted from salaries at graduated rates and remitted to the state where each employee lives, by the 10th of the following month. Pension and housing fund deductions ride alongside it.
The painful part is the arithmetic across reliefs and bands, done correctly for every person every month. This is exactly the kind of work software should do, which is why Dbrij payslips compute PAYE, pension and NHF from the gross and keep the running schedule for you.
Withholding tax flips the direction. When a company pays you for services, they may be required to keep back a percentage and remit it against your name. It stings in the moment, but it is not lost money. It is a credit against your company income tax, provided you collect the evidence.
Two disciplines matter: record the WHT amount whenever a customer pays you short, and chase the credit notes. On Dbrij, an invoice records the WHT suffered at payment time, and the annual estimate already nets it off.
CIT is charged on profit for the financial year. Small companies under the turnover threshold have enjoyed a zero rate; above it, the full rate applies with a development levy alongside. Filing is due within six months of your year end.
The trap here is estimating profit from your bank balance. Profit is revenue minus deductible expenses, and every expense you failed to record is tax you will overpay. Salaries, rents, software, transport, the airtime you bought for the referral program, all of it belongs in the books.
Dbrij Finance was built around exactly this rhythm: the tax page keeps the calendar, the invoices feed the VAT and WHT schedules, payslips feed PAYE, and the CIT estimate reads your real numbers all year. The filing is still yours, but the fear does not have to be.
Dbrij is Nigeria’s company operating system: the first Nigerian built platform to put team chat, video meetings, email, HR, tax compliant payroll, customer support, marketing, analytics and cloud hosting in one product on one subscription.