Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has issued a Public Notice [BO1] to lift its May 2021 suspension of Local Filing of Country-by-Country (CbC) Reports by Constituent Entities in Nigeria. Constituent Entities are the Nigeria-based subsidiaries and branches of Multinational Enterprises. Relevant Constituent Entities are now to, with effect from January 1, 2022, duly make their CbC Reports Local Filing with FIRS in compliance with Regulation 4 of the CbC Regulations 2018 (CbC Regulations).[BO2] You may recall that the obligation placed on relevant Ultimate Parent Entities (UPEs) under Regulation 3 of the CbC Regulations was never suspended.
FIRS new directive comes on the back of Nigeria’s recent recognition as a Reciprocal Jurisdiction under the OECD’s CbC Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA). Information can currently proceed from Nigeria to 63 other global jurisdictions while information can proceed from 78 other global jurisdictions to Nigeria. Currently, 91 different jurisdictions are signatories to the OECD’s CbC MCAA whether expressed under the EU Council Directive 2016/881/EU or under double taxation conventions or tax information exchange agreements.
With the latest development from FIRS, all relevant multi-jurisdiction businesses in Nigeria, that is, those with a total consolidated Group revenue in excess of N160billion (circa US$320million) in any accounting year, whether they be UPEs or Constituent Entities are now required to file their CbC Reports not later than 12 months following their accounting year end date. Multi-jurisdiction businesses without the stated Group revenue threshold, that is, N160billion (circa US$320million) in any accounting year, are excluded from CbC Report filing obligations in Nigeria and are not affected by the foregoing information.
Should you have further enquiries on this alert, please reach out to our International Tax Desk at itd@taxaide.com.ng.
