Seven months after Nigeria's most sweeping tax overhaul in decades took effect, the Central Bank of Nigeria's own survey shows that multiple taxation remains the single biggest constraint on Nigerian businesses, with 70.8% of respondents identifying it as their most pressing operational burden in July 2026, ahead of insecurity and high interest rates.
The findings come from the CBN's Business Expectations Survey for July 2026, conducted between July 6 and 10 across 1,900 business enterprises nationwide, and suggest that although the Tinubu administration has introduced far-reaching reforms aimed at simplifying Nigeria's tax system, many businesses are yet to experience meaningful relief from the burden of multiple taxes and levies.
The persistence of the complaint carries particular weight because the reforms were specifically designed to address it. In June 2025, President Tinubu signed four landmark tax reform bills, the Nigeria Tax Act, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act, the Nigeria Revenue Service Establishment Act and the Joint Revenue Board Establishment Act, which took effect in January 2026 with the explicit aim of simplifying tax administration, eliminating duplication and rationalising the country's notoriously fragmented levy system. The July survey result suggests that the rationalisation has not yet reached the operational level where most businesses feel it.
The monthly BES data tells a consistent story across the first half of 2026. In June, high and multiple taxation scored 73.7%, insecurity 71.7% and high interest rates 67.0% as the top three constraints, followed by an unfavourable political climate at 63.5% and high bank charges at 61.9%. In March, insufficient power supply topped the list at 74.5%, followed by insecurity at 70.9%, high and multiple taxes at 69.2%, high interest rates at 66.6% and financial problems at 64.3%. Multiple taxation has ranked among the top three constraints in every single monthly survey this year.
The explanation for the disconnect between reform and relief is structural. Nigeria's multiple taxation problem is not exclusively a federal problem. State and local government levies, development fees, market charges, signage charges and sector-specific impositions from multiple regulatory agencies operate largely independently of the federal tax reform architecture. A business in Lagos simultaneously navigates the NRS, the Lagos Internal Revenue Service, the Lagos State Building Control Agency, multiple environmental levies, professional body fees and regulatory charges from sector-specific agencies, none of which were within the scope of the four bills signed in June 2025.
The CBN survey noted that the outlook suggests financing conditions may ease slightly but are expected to remain relatively tight, while overall findings point to improving exchange rate expectations but persistent concerns over the cost of doing business. Average capacity utilisation across the surveyed firms remained flat near 55.9%, consistent with the MAN data showing Nigerian manufacturers operating at below 50% of installed capacity.
The irony embedded in the July survey is hard to miss. The same month that Finance Minister Oyedele promised to publish a detailed breakdown of where the subsidy savings went, the CBN's own survey confirmed that the businesses expected to grow the economy, create jobs and expand the tax base are still spending more time navigating Nigeria's tax bureaucracy than benefiting from its reform. Simplifying the federal tax architecture was the necessary first step. Getting state and local government to follow is the harder, longer and more politically contentious second one, and nothing in the July survey suggests it has started.
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