Topic: Nigerian Government plans to begin taxing gambling. - page 10. (Read 2256 times)

Most governments impose taxes only on gambling companies, for the gambling industry operating in the territory of that country, it is not charged to users/players, if that happens, What is certain is that people don't need to worry about gambling, especially in Nigeria and vice versa. As far as I know, that's what most governments that implement a tax system on gambling do.

I'm sure the Nigerian government is implementing taxes, of course they know that gambling in Nigeria has become a special concern for the government, perhaps the increase in people who are seen gambling online, This news may also be related to what @Erigga, a Nigerian singer said in another topic, ordinary people gamble more.

For me, whatever the government does, I support it, especially regarding taxation, with the increase in taxes on state assets, maybe that is a way to eradicate poverty for Nigerians through several gambling sites that exist there.

Is there any message Nigerian government are not passing to her citizens on this new introduction of tax into gambling?

I am trying to analyze this, why World Cup is supporting this move with the sum of $2.25million. Do they see or  have huge gain from this since there are whole lot of gamblers in Nigeria. Or they see this way as the way the Nigeria government will pay off the loan of $2.25billion they are currently seeking for


However, let's see how this goes and what it will result to in the future since it all seems that the tax money that will be generating from gambling will be used to be clearing World Cup loans

On the 2023 financial act, 10% capital gain tax was introduced on cryptocurrencies. In reality, there is nothing like that. But we have the government to blame for this. India government blocked Indians to access many exchanges including Binance. And later also told Playstore and App store to remove the exchanges apps. Two or more exchanges like Binance still find its way back to India. But Binance CEO only said Nigerian leaders wanted bribe. Nigeria laws are not strict like those of the developed countries. I thought the government wanted to make the exchanges to get registered in Nigeria and regulate them, but everything we later saw was the opposite. Despite all, common exchanges like Bybit and Bitget are still in Nigeria. I guess some unknown leaders are the reasons those exchanges did not stop naira/crypto trading and it would likely be because of one thing which is bribe.

Yeah, I should have asked how many Nigerians have actually paid income tax on their crypto profits instead...
Or how many are going to pay the gambling tax? 
Honesty tell me it's something between 0 and 0.001%!


In $ terms there are other countries that have suffered the same, even Italy was at 2.16 trillion it har barely managed to climb to 2.05 trillion, Brazil went from 2.46 trillion in 2014 to 1.48 trillion in 2020, don't think you're alone, this is because of the growing power of the USD. As for population you have a ton of youth unemployable population, 110 million under 18 per data, hardly sustainable, this graph:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.0014.TO?end=2022&locations=NG-IN-BR-MX-CN-ZA-US&skipRedirection=true&start=2000&view=chart
shows 41 million more children under 14 in 23 years....common, this is insane!!!!


But how can you expect things to happen and the government to fund stuff with little to no money?

I tried to explain to a few guys from outside Europe who worked for us, how welfare for example happens when:
You work from 20-65, for 45 years and you pay 10% of the 540 000 euros earned (1000 euros per month for simplicity) So you have paid 54 000 and you live for 12 more years (low estimate!!), how do you expect back something more than 375 euros pension?
And that's all!!! All the 10% doesn't even cover pension welfare, not anything else, throw in schools, health, infrastructure, police, fire and the army, how to keep it funded and efficient?

It's a trap of letting you go easy with small taxes and then letting you cover everything out of your pocket, and at the end of the day it's not the best deal.
I won't say that suddenly raising tax everything will be better, but with everyone doing tax evasion for sure it won't!

I expected Nigerians using exchanges like Binance, Bybit, OKX, Kucoin and others to be paying tax buy now. Also I expected the exchanges to be paying tax by now. There will be more money that will also be generated. But see how illiterates Nigerian leaders are. You saw Binance CEO that said some of the leaders wanted bribe. That is Nigeria. I have come to the conclusion what the country should benefit from are collected by some leaders underneath. The president is just there but know nothing. I felt disappointed with how his leadership has been.

Government are not generating or under-generating taxes from cryptocurrencies. Kucoin left the Nigerian P2P and the newly appointed SEC chairman praised Kucoin. It was a clear evidence that he is only newly appointed for nothing good in return.

Tax in Nigeria is low but gradually the government are increasing it but not yet comparable with the developed nations. But like I posted earlier, we were much better when the taxes were low compared to now. From the first in GDP in Africa, we are now in fourth, yet we are the most populous.

10% mostly on salaries and capital gain. But there are other taxes like banks charging VAT and Stamp duties. Last month or two months ago, they introduced cybersecurity charges but which people went against before they cancelled it. Call and internet service providers charge VAT. These are the ones that I noticed.

That is too much.

Every country that applies taxes on gambling definitely has different rules such as how much winnings in one calenders year will be taxed, so every gambler who, even though he succeeds in winning, if the winnings do not reach the amount stipulated in the tax rules, will not be taxed, so that's how it is my understanding of taxes in gambling.
You don't need to be surprised if there are countries that implement taxes because countries will always target things that they know can bring in income for the country and gambling is one of them because the money circulating is very large.
You might think that playing in a crypto casino can avoid taxes if taxes are applied later, but you will always exchange your crypto to fiat to be able to use it in the real world, so in the future when you have income that exceeds the non-taxable limit, you are obliged to report and pay tax unless you continue to store it in crypto.
However, imposing taxes on gambling will not reduce people's interest in gambling because there are always reasons that make gamblers return to playing.

Every decision has a dark side & a bright side, if we talk about Nigeria it will probably have a big impact on individuals there considering that Nigeria isn't a country that operates in the service sector.

The dark side is that Nigerians will be worse off because of this, especially as Nigeria is a developing country. But on the other hand, the country will benefit from this gambling tax, it will help the country in matters of national development.

More gamblers in Nigeria will go to gambling with crypto? That should be the case considering that Nigeria is one of the countries with the largest crypto adopters in the world and the largest in Africa.

Any gambling site that is to operated in nigeria must be taxed be it crypto gambling site or not whenever their site permits and allows people from Nigeria then they are not exempted from it. Who knows there could be a new policy to governed this gambling site especially cryptocurrency gambling site, and don't you think this moves would want to captivates those that are gambling through crypto as well?

Now lemme draw your attention; At first it was exchange they tried all their best to short down most of platform that offers p2p trade having succeeded that, they thought of other areas at which people are using cryptocurrency they now discovered gambling site. Do you know that almost all the gambling site we have that is operating under Nigerian law allows cryptocurrency withdrawal?

Yes, this is another aspect to sell crypto, let say you may likely deposit crypto and withdraw through another currency, let say when you deposit BTC you withdraw NGN or when you deposit NGN then you take BTC. Haven the government discovered this they are trying all means to have their shares since they can't beat crypto they would always find a possible way to get their ass in as form of taxation.

Let watch, this things would likely happened to those platform that provides p2p they could be asked for taxation, so I am not surprised seeing this moved from government.

In my country, we are not deceived by sweet promises; instead, the politician with the biggest budget for vote-buying usually wins. I also agree that corruption is everywhere. Once you sell your vote, you have no right to complain about the government. You can't expect politicians to give money for votes and still serve and protect the interests of the people. Of course, they will steal to get their return on investment.

Nowadays, politics has become a business. Sadly, that's the reality, at least in some countries, especially those that are struggling or the most corrupt.
And the main reason why a country gets poor is "corruption".

One of the largest tax commsion in a country comes from the casinos or the gambling industry that's why other countries allow having casinos to operate in them but if they will add a tax for the players that's have a different story I guess they will not enjoy having playing anymore because few of their funds will just use for payment, also the casino now just need to give a kyc to their players like having an identification if they want to play which is other players will not see this as a good opportunity to play anymore.


Corruption is normal in government that's why tons of teams would like to run with the politics and we know how it has a dark secret, sometimes people doesn't have an option still to vote. In my country they can easily deceived with the false promises of the politicians and now after few years they will now suffer with their decisions.

They are getting a loan for multiple programs, the loans are for the first implementations but the further revenue to come from other sources to keep it running, and one of those is taxing gambling, alcohol and tobacco. The money is for increasing digitalization, investing in keeping the oil production afloat, recycling, and many more, the bank can't give Nigeria all that free money so they must secure funding themselves, which comes from these taxes.

As for the taxes themselves, I'm going to address the elephant in the room, now let me hear it honestly from people from Nigeria:
- How much of your income do you pay in taxes?

If you want a country like the top 3 happiest and with best welfare, are you willing to pay nearly 60% of your income like in Denmark?

That's because the government wants to have additional income from the taxes and they will search for every business in their country and apply that for every business. If they can gives or supports their citizens by giving their citizens needs, that will be no problem if they asks for the business owner to pay the taxes.

But we knows that some bad people in the government used that money from taxes for their own good and forgets to support their citizens. That makes their citizens doesn't like what they see and asks the government to cleans their office from the bad people in the government. Maybe people will search for the online casino to keeps playing gambling because they don't have to pay any taxes to their government, especially if they don't tells to other people about their gambling activity and they uses crypto to playing gambling.

Can't the government do that because there are many illegal gambling operations in that country? I'm just asking. So instead of stopping them, they should regulate them so that there is an advantage to getting the government that is there in the country of Nigeria, right?

Of course, for gamblers who often play gambling, especially if you are a rich person, they don't want that. And for the poor who may rely on gambling that they can suddenly become rich, they also don't want that, and for others, it will be. That's in favor of those who don't really gamble to reduce those who gamble in online casinos. What do you think?

I think it is a natural thing for the state to impose taxes, because even in Mexico it is the same even more draconian taxes, this is a form of government concern for gambling and it is also recognized that with the risks that arise among the community due to gambling, the allocation of funds from gambling taxes can be used for other things that are more beneficial to the people there.

But the question for me is, is it the gambling platform that is taxed for operating in Nigeria or is it the gambling customer or gambler that is taxed, like if you win a bet and then want to withdraw the winnings then you need to pay tax to the government as gambling tax, this I don't know specifically and what is the clear presentation of the tax arrangement because maybe this will be an attraction for gamblers and more calm or maybe it will be something bad for gamblers, depending on how the tax design regarding gambling in your country.

Although, that is not a problem for me as I lose more than win in gambling but Nigerian government are corrupt. Even if we should not refer to the corruption, the country is becoming worse as the government are demanding more taxes. In 2014, Nigeria GDP was $568 billion and the country was far better than now although we were still complaining at the time also not knowing the future which is now would be far worse. The GDP has dropped more than half after 10. It is now 2024. Nigeria GDP presently is $252 billion and the standard of living has significantly fallen. The government within this 10 years removed fuel subsidy, increase electricity cost and added more taxes.

Yeah casinos can just deduct it and then they will remit it to the taxation department. For online and crypto gambling, I think it was the same as when we do our other crypto activities, where we will also remit our taxes manually because they are not auto-charged by the platforms that we are using. It wasn't only applicable to first timers but even the old timers are doing this too.

Taxes are not a new thing anymore, so it doesn't look weird or unfair but the problem is only us because maybe we are too stingy. There might be a reason on why they don't exempt tax charges in a gambling loss. It could be for the people to quit gambling, just like I see in the tobacco industry now.

In fact, if I lived in Nigeria, I would also feel burdened if I had to bear the tax costs for my gambling activities, we know that the country economy is not stable and imposing taxes can help, but this will give rise to different sentiments depending on government.
Indeed, they can use tax proceeds to improve the welfare of less fortunate people and help to develop several social programs, but they must really consider that the majority of gamblers are not rich people with more finances.
There will be significant reduction in physical gambling activities and I agree that this could make it possible for Nigerian gamblers to move into online gambling which is even cryptocurrency based.
Good impact is that crypto adoption in Nigeria will increase increasingly, but this will have negative impact on the value of Nigeria native currency and also inflation.

Point is that the government must be able to really consider every decision it takes, lest because of the demands of the country they sacrifice the small community regarding the impacts that could occur.

I don’t just know why the new government is just focused on tax alone, all what the administration is about is the money that will be entering the government account, and they are not making provisions for necessary things that the citizens need. If a government is imposing a heavy tax on its citizens, then the money generated is supposed to be well utilized well. Seriously, I don’t really like the idea of placing a tax on gambling because the money will still be embezzled by certain people, I just feel the government is taking money from the poor just to enrich themselves.

When a government is indeed lacking out in so many ways to find a means of stabilizing it dilapidating economy, they will have to considers falling back on the people and their businesses in other for them to increase the internal generating revenue they mint form the citizen and one of the ways through which they do this is by setting target on one of the most prolific businesses or activities and tax them, though for some reasons, everyone have to give full compliance to the demands on tax irrespective of the sector in involved.

The Nigerian government may have established an infrastructure such as we are introducing such a tax and then introduced the law so that the poor people do not suffer more losses from gambling. They may have arranged such a basis. Taxing gambling is something that has both pros and cons, and of course it depends on where you look at it. But in short, users will visit crypto platforms more.