Nigeria Capital Gains Tax Calculator

An estimate for planning, not tax advice. This calculation covers Nigeria, year of assessment 2026 and a resident individual investing for their own account in shares, ETFs and other chargeable assets, not in property or land. Since 1 January 2026 the Nigeria Tax Act, 2025 has repealed the Capital Gains Tax Act, so there is no 10% flat rate any more: your gain is added to your other income and taxed at the personal income tax bands of 0% to 25%. Speak to a qualified Nigerian tax practitioner before you act on a figure.

What is a Nigeria capital gains tax calculator?

A Nigeria capital gains tax calculator is a tool that works out the personal income tax due on a chargeable gain from selling shares, ETFs and other chargeable assets in Nigeria, using the rules of the Nigeria Tax Act, 2025 for the 2026 year of assessment. It measures the gain as your disposal proceeds less acquisition cost and selling costs (ss. 39 to 41), applies the exemption reserved for shares in Nigerian companies, and then prices the result through the personal income tax bands.

The phrase “capital gains tax” survives in everyday Nigerian use, but since 1 January 2026 it is no longer a separate tax. The Capital Gains Tax Act has been repealed, and a chargeable gain now enters your taxable income alongside salary and business profits (s. 28(2)(a)(v)) before the bands of the Fourth Schedule are applied to your chargeable income (ss. 30(1) and 58). Two people with the same gain therefore owe different amounts, which is why the tool asks what else you earn.

The calculator takes five visible inputs, “Type of asset”, “Total sale proceeds”, “Total purchase cost”, “Selling costs” and “Other taxable income”, plus three advanced fields, “Pension & reliefs”, “Annual rent paid” and “Reinvested proceeds”. It returns six result rows: “Tax on your gain”, “Effective rate on the gain”, “Net gain after tax”, “Total tax for the year”, “Your top tax band” and a “Share exemption status” badge that says why your gain is taxable or not. It covers financial assets only: a house, a plot of land or any other property follows separate rules and is outside this tool.

Why is the capital gains tax calculator important for investors in Nigeria?

The capital gains tax calculator is important for Nigerian investors because the 2026 rules make the tax on a gain unknowable by mental arithmetic: there is no flat rate to multiply by, and the amount depends on your other income, on the size of your total yearly disposals and on whether the shares were issued by a Nigerian company. A gain of ₦10,000,000 on Nigerian shares can cost ₦0, and a gain of ₦10,000,001 in the same portfolio can cost ₦1,890,000, because the exemption in s. 34(1)(a)(i) is a gate rather than an allowance.

The rate you actually pay is your marginal rate. A salary of ₦6,000,000 already lands you in the 18% band, so the next naira of chargeable gain is taxed there, not at the 15% figure that circulates online. Concentrating a large disposal into a single year pushes the gain up through 21%, 23% and 25%, an effect worth measuring before you decide how much to sell. Nothing in the Act indexes the gain for inflation, so the nominal profit is what gets taxed even when the naira has lost purchasing power over the holding period.

The moment to run the numbers is before the sale, not at filing time. Use the calculator when you are about to close a position and want to see the net; when you are deciding whether to spread disposals across two years of assessment; when your total proceeds for the year are approaching ₦150,000,000; and when you are choosing between Nigerian shares and foreign holdings bought through an online broker, because only the first can be exempt. Tax is the last slice of a return, so the figure belongs in the decision about how to invest, not in a review of it.

How do you use the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator?

To use the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator, choose your asset category, enter the year’s total sale proceeds, purchase cost and selling costs for that category, add your other taxable income, and open the advanced fields for pension, rent and reinvested proceeds; the tool then returns the tax on your gain, your net gain and your total tax for the year.

The steps to use the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator are listed below:

1. Select the type of asset. “Nigerian company shares” is the category that can qualify for the ₦150,000,000 and ₦10,000,000 exemption. “Foreign shares, ETFs & other” covers everything else in the tool, where no exemption exists. Pick one category per calculation.
2. Enter your total sale proceeds. This is the aggregate of all your disposals in that category over the year of assessment, not one sale, because s. 34(1)(a)(i) measures proceeds in aggregate over 12 consecutive months.
3. Enter your total purchase cost. This is the acquisition cost of the same holdings you sold. The Act prescribes no cost method, so on partial lots you decide which purchases you are matching.
4. Enter your selling costs. Broker commission and the NGX, SEC, CSCS and stamp duty charges on the sale belong here, as incidental costs of disposal.
5. Enter your other taxable income. This is your gross taxable income for the year, salary and allowances before pension and other reliefs, business profits and rent received. Do not deduct the old Consolidated Relief Allowance: it was abolished from 2026, and the local PAYE calculators that still apply it will show you a lower figure than this one. Leave out dividends and interest, which are already taxed at source as a final tax.

Three advanced fields refine the result. “Pension & reliefs” takes your pension, NHF, NHIS and life premium contributions, the eligible deductions of s. 30(2), and never the abolished Consolidated Relief Allowance. “Annual rent paid” generates rent relief of 20% of the rent, capped at ₦500,000. “Reinvested proceeds” applies only to taxable Nigerian shares, where proceeds put back into Nigerian shares in the same year of assessment reduce the taxable share of the gain.

One instruction matters more than the field order: the tool covers one asset category per run. If you sold Nigerian shares and foreign shares, ETFs or crypto in the same year, do not add them together in “Total sale proceeds”. Run the calculator on the category you care about, then add the taxable part of the other gain to “Other taxable income”, which is ₦0 for exempt Nigerian shares and the whole gain for foreign or crypto assets. To price the other category, run it again with the roles reversed. The two “Tax on your gain” figures must never be added together, because each one measures its gain sitting on top of your income; the comparable number across runs is “Total tax for the year”, and if it differs between runs your inputs disagree with each other. Each press of Calculate refreshes every row together, so two disposal plans for the same stock position can be compared before the sell order goes in.

What formula does the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator use?

The Nigeria capital gains tax calculator uses a two-part formula: it first turns your disposals into a chargeable gain, applying the Nigerian-share test and any reinvestment relief, then prices that gain incrementally, as the difference between the tax on your income with the gain and the tax on your income without it.

In these formulas, Proceeds, Cost and Selling costs are the yearly totals for the selected category; Chargeable gain is nil when Nigerian shares pass both limits of s. 34(1)(a)(i), the whole gain when they fail either limit, the gain reduced in proportion to reinvested proceeds when relief applies, and the whole gain for every other asset; Deductions are your entered pension and other reliefs plus rent relief, which is 20% of annual rent capped at ₦500,000 (s. 30(2)(a)(vi)); and bands is the Fourth Schedule scale applied to chargeable income under s. 58.

For example, Nigerian shares sold for ₦4,000,000 that cost ₦2,500,000, with ₦60,000 of selling costs, produce a gain of ₦1,440,000 that passes both limits, so the chargeable gain and the tax on it are both ₦0.

The formula prices one category of asset for one year of assessment: it applies no inflation indexation, carries no loss forward and assumes every amount is already converted into naira.

What is an example of a capital gains tax calculation?

An example of a capital gains tax calculation is a Nigerian investor who sells NGX shares for ₦4,000,000 during 2026, having paid ₦2,500,000 for them and ₦60,000 in selling costs, while earning ₦6,000,000 of salary, which produces ₦0 of tax on the gain, worked out as follows:

1. Work out the gain. ₦4,000,000 less ₦2,500,000 less ₦60,000 = ₦1,440,000.
2. Apply the Nigerian-share test. Proceeds of ₦4,000,000 are below ₦150,000,000 and the gain of ₦1,440,000 does not exceed ₦10,000,000, so both conditions of s. 34(1)(a)(i) are met and the chargeable gain is ₦0.
3. Build the chargeable income. With no reliefs entered, chargeable income is the ₦6,000,000 salary both with and without the gain.
4. Price it through the bands. ₦330,000 on the first ₦3,000,000 plus 18% of the remaining ₦3,000,000 gives ₦870,000 of tax for the year, the same figure in either direction, so the tax attributable to the gain is ₦0.
5. Read the net. The whole ₦1,440,000 stays with the investor, at an effective rate of 0.00%, and the top tax band shows 18%.

The ₦870,000 in “Total tax for the year” is the tax on the salary, not on the shares. It appears even when the gain is exempt, because the calculator prices your whole year and then isolates the slice the gain is responsible for. That slice is what the exemption removes.

How do you read the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator’s result?

You read the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator’s result by starting with the “Share exemption status” badge, which tells you why the number below it is what it is, then reading “Tax on your gain” against “Net gain after tax” and checking “Your top tax band” to see where the next naira of gain would be taxed. “Total tax for the year” is the whole-year figure, useful for comparing two runs, and “Effective rate on the gain” is the tax divided by the chargeable part of the gain, never by the exempt part.

A warning line appears when you are within 2% of either share limit: “You are within 2% of a Nigerian-share exemption boundary; a small change can make the whole gain taxable.” Treat it as the most valuable output on the page. One naira decides everything at that point: a gain of ₦10,000,000 on ₦60,000,000 of proceeds is exempt and costs nothing, while the same disposal with ₦1 less in selling costs makes the gain ₦10,000,001, brings the whole amount into charge and produces ₦1,890,000 of tax at an effective rate of 18.90%, leaving ₦8,110,001 of the gain and lifting total tax for the year from ₦690,000 to ₦2,580,000.

The effective rate is not a headline rate and will rarely match a band. It rises as a gain climbs through the scale and settles between the bands it spans: 18.90% in the example above, and 21.95% for a ₦9,500,000 gain sitting on ₦20,000,000 of other income. If the effective rate reads 0.00% while the status says taxable, the gain itself is nil or negative, not exempt.

Why is the ₦150m and ₦10m share exemption a cliff rather than an allowance?

The ₦150,000,000 and ₦10,000,000 exemption is a cliff because s. 34(1)(a)(i) states two conditions joined by “and”, and failing either one brings the entire gain into charge rather than the excess above a threshold. Proceeds must be less than ₦150,000,000, a strict test, and the gain must not exceed ₦10,000,000, which means a gain of exactly ₦10,000,000 is still excluded. Both are measured on your aggregate disposals over 12 consecutive months, and both apply only to shares in Nigerian companies.

The third row is the one investors miss. A gain of ₦9,500,000 is comfortably under the gain limit, but ₦180,000,000 of proceeds breaks the first condition on its own, so the whole gain is chargeable: with ₦20,000,000 of other income the tax is ₦2,085,000, an effective rate of 21.95%, leaving ₦7,415,000 net and total tax of ₦5,715,000 for the year.

Reinvestment is the only relief available once the test has failed, and it is proportional rather than total. Where proceeds from Nigerian shares are put back into shares of the same or another Nigerian company within the same year of assessment, s. 34(1)(a)(iii) charges only the part of the gain matching the proceeds you did not reinvest. On ₦200,000,000 of proceeds with ₦150,000,000 of cost and ₦1,000,000 of selling costs, the gain is ₦49,000,000 and the test fails; reinvesting ₦120,000,000, or 60% of proceeds, leaves 40% of the gain in charge, so the chargeable gain is ₦19,600,000 and the tax is ₦3,546,000. The tool shows that as an effective rate of 18.09% on the chargeable part, which is 7.24% of the full ₦49,000,000 gain, and a net gain of ₦45,454,000.

How does the calculator treat foreign shares and ETFs?

The calculator treats foreign shares and ETFs as fully chargeable: selecting “Foreign shares, ETFs & other” switches the exemption off, because the proviso in s. 34(1)(a) covers shares in a Nigerian company only. A resident is taxed on gains wherever they arise, whether or not the money is brought into Nigeria (s. 12), so US shares bought through a Nigerian investing app are inside the charge from the first naira of gain.

The contrast is stark on the same numbers. A ₦3,000,000 disposal of foreign shares that cost ₦2,000,000, with ₦20,000 of selling costs, produces a gain of ₦980,000 that is chargeable in full. With ₦2,400,000 of other income, ₦192,000 of pension contributions and ₦1,200,000 of annual rent, which generates ₦240,000 of rent relief, the tax on the gain is ₦147,000 at an effective rate of 15.00%, leaving ₦833,000 net and total tax of ₦322,200. The identical gain on Nigerian shares would have been exempt and cost ₦0.

Two neighbouring cases sit outside the calculator even though they are chargeable. A foreign currency balance is itself a chargeable asset under s. 34(1)(b), so gains on holdings in dollars or on forex positions follow the same bands with no exemption, and the tool assumes you have already converted every amount into naira at the rates that applied. Fund structures also differ from single shares in their distribution and reporting treatment, which the tool does not model: an ETF is priced here only as a chargeable asset bought and sold.

What does frequent trading do to the calculator’s result?

Frequent trading changes the result through the proceeds test rather than through any special rate, because the calculator aggregates a whole year of disposals and s. 34(1)(a)(i) measures gross proceeds, not profit. Nigeria has no separate regime for active traders: business profits and chargeable gains run through the same chain of taxable income, total income and chargeable income, and reach the same Fourth Schedule bands.

The arithmetic catches people with modest capital. Turning over ₦5,000,000 thirty-five times in a year generates ₦175,000,000 of disposal proceeds, which is past ₦150,000,000, so the Nigerian-share exemption is lost for the year even if the total gain is small. This is why the calculator asks for the year’s aggregate proceeds instead of a single trade: a buy-and-hold investor and an active trader with the same profit can end up in completely different positions, and only the second one sees the whole gain in charge.

One thing the tool deliberately does not decide is whether frequent activity turns you from an investor into someone carrying on a trade. That reclassification would change the inputs, allowing business expenses and removing access to the share exemption entirely, but the Nigeria Tax Act, 2025 sets no test for it and no NRS or State IRS guidance exists for 2026. The calculator therefore models the investor case and leaves the classification question to a practitioner.

What are the limits of the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator?

The main limit of the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator is that it prices one category of financial asset for one resident individual in the 2026 year of assessment, so the figure is only as good as the totals you enter and stops where the Act stops being settled.

The following points sit outside the calculation:

• Property and land. A house or plot sale follows its own rules, including the once in a lifetime exemption for your own dwelling house and up to one acre under s. 51, plus state consent fees and stamp duty. None of it is modelled here.
• Loss carry-forward and loss relief against other income. A negative result returns nil tax; the mechanics of carrying a capital loss forward until it is recovered are not calculated.
• The abolished Consolidated Relief Allowance. The old PITA deduction of ₦200,000 plus 20% of gross income no longer exists, and the eligible deductions of s. 30(2) are a closed list. Nigerian PAYE calculators that still apply it will show less tax than this tool, and the difference is theirs, not ours.
• Dividends and interest. Both are taxed at source as a final tax, so they belong in neither the gain nor “Other taxable income”.
• Currency conversion, foreign tax credits and treaty relief on gains realised abroad, along with indirect transfers of shares in non-Nigerian companies deriving value from Nigerian assets.
• Termination benefits, personal chattels, private vehicles, life policies, securities lending and instalment consideration spread over more than twelve months.
• Non-residents, part-year residents, presumptive assessment, capital allowances, penalties, interest and the filing procedure itself.

Two mechanical points complete the picture. The tool computes at full precision and rounds only for display, to the whole naira, half up, with effective rates to two decimals: the ₦1,890,000 above is ₦1,890,000.21 before rounding, so a few naira of difference against your own working is normal. And a gain is treated as arising on the last day of the year of assessment under s. 42(3), with the return filed by self-assessment (Nigeria Tax Administration Act, 2025, s. 13(1)); most resident individuals file with their State Internal Revenue Service, while residents of the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), members of the armed forces, the Nigeria Police Force other than civilian staff, and Foreign Service officers are assessed by the Nigeria Revenue Service instead. The deadline in common use for individuals is 31 March of the following year, which is worth confirming with your own authority.

What is the difference between a capital gains tax calculation and a crypto tax calculation?

The difference between a capital gains tax calculation and a crypto tax calculation in Nigeria is the exemption and the treatment of losses: shares in Nigerian companies can escape tax entirely through the ₦150,000,000 and ₦10,000,000 test, while digital assets have no threshold at all, and a crypto loss can be set only against crypto gains, whereas both calculations then run through the same 0% to 25% bands.

Choose by the asset you sold. If it was shares, ETFs or another financial asset, this page is the right one, and a crypto gain you also realised this year goes into “Other taxable income” so your marginal band is correct. If you are pricing the coins themselves, the Nigeria crypto tax calculator applies the ring-fence and the absence of any threshold, which is where the two calculations genuinely part company.

Which calculators are related to the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator?

The calculators related to the Nigeria capital gains tax calculator cover the steps either side of the tax: producing the gain in the first place, measuring the income stream that is taxed differently, and testing how much of a nominal gain inflation has already taken.

The related calculators are listed below:

• Stock Profit Calculator: works out the profit or loss on a share position, which is the figure this tax calculation starts from.
• Dividend Calculator: projects dividend income, which is taxed at source as a final tax and therefore never belongs in this calculation.
• Inflation Calculator: shows how much of a taxed nominal gain is purchasing power you never gained, since the Act allows no indexation.
• Nigeria Crypto Tax Calculator: prices digital asset gains, which have no exemption and ring-fenced losses.

FAQ

This calculator is an educational estimate and does not replace tax advice. It applies the Nigeria Tax Act, 2025 to a resident individual for the 2026 year of assessment and excludes property and land, loss carry-forward, currency conversion, foreign tax credits, dividends and interest, non-residents, penalties and filing procedure. Most residents are assessed by their State Internal Revenue Service, while residents of the Federal Capital Territory, the armed forces, the police other than civilian staff and the Foreign Service are assessed by the Nigeria Revenue Service. Speak to a qualified Nigerian tax practitioner before acting.