Nigeria to Launch Pilot E-Invoicing Program in Second Half of 2025

Last September, the Nigerian Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) announced its plans to implement mandatory B2B, B2C, and B2G e-invoicing. However, the timeline for implementing this new e-invoicing system has not been stated. In the last meeting with key stakeholders, the FIRS announced its plan to launch a pilot program in the second half of the year.

The nationwide e-invoicing system, known as the Merchant Buyers’ Service Solution, aims to ensure transparency and accountability in Tax Administration, enhance tax compliance, and increase state revenue.

Implications for Taxable Persons

The first companies to participate in the pilot e-invoicing programs are the largest taxable persons with large ERP systems and a large number of daily and monthly transactions. As the FIRSe Chief of Staff stated, integrating these large taxable persons, such as Huawei, and the FIRS will last at least six months.

Therefore, since some companies have already started the integration process, the pilot program could begin in July of this year once the integration is completed.

Once the pilot program is completed, the result and feedback from the implementation process will serve as guidelines for broader implementation of the mandatory e-invocing system for medium and small taxable persons.

However, it remains to be seen when e-invoicing will become mandatory. Nevertheless, depending on the pilot program's success, information on when other groups of taxable persons will have to meet e-invoicing requirements could be known in the second part of the year. Additionally, it remains to be seen if the rollout will be phased, or medium and small taxable persons simultaneously become subject to these requirements.

Conclusion

The Nigerian government and FIRS, as the governing body, continue to work on introducing nearly real-time reporting, which should increase the efficiency of monitoring all transactions, whether online or offline. The introduction and implementation of mandatory e-invoicing are part of the Tax Administration and Enforcement Act of 2007 initiative, which is not entering its third phase.

Source: VATabout, Vanguard