Do Nigerians pay tax on US stock gains?

Yes. From 1 January 2026 a Nigerian pays tax on a US stock gain at their own income tax rate, rising to 25%, and the ₦150m exemption that shelters Nigerian shares doesn't reach US ones. The US takes 30% of your dividends on top. On Daya Stocks, dividends are reinvested after tax.

Two governments are involved and they take different things at different moments. Nigeria taxes the profit when you sell. The United States taxes the dividend when it's paid. Nothing you do inside your app changes either one, so the useful thing is to know both numbers before you sell rather than after.

Do you pay Nigerian tax when you sell a US stock?

Yes. From 1 January 2026 Nigeria taxes the gain on a US share at your personal income tax rate rather than at a flat rate. The old 10% capital gains tax is gone. The Capital Gains Tax Act was repealed and gains now sit inside income tax, so the rate you pay depends on everything else you earned that year.

Two independent readings of the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 agree on this. Ifesinachi Ike of KPMG in Nigeria, writing on 2 March 2026, says gains are taxed at the applicable income tax rate based on the progressive tax band. A separate reading published on 11 October 2026 puts it the same way: an individual adds the gain to taxable income and pays at the Fourth Schedule bands, which rise to 25%.

What it means for you: the first ₦800,000 of income is tax free and the top rate is 25%. Where your gain lands between those two depends on your other income, so the same ₦3 million profit costs a low earner less than it costs a high earner. Nigeria's money rules in 2026 carries the current position on the bands.

Why doesn't the ₦150 million exemption cover US shares?

Because that exemption is written for shares in Nigerian companies. Section 34 of the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 exempts a share gain only where the sale proceeds stay under ₦150 million and the chargeable gain stays under ₦10 million in any 12 consecutive months, and the relief attaches to shares in companies registered in Nigeria.

Both tests have to be met, not one of them. Proceeds of exactly ₦150 million fail the first test, while a gain of exactly ₦10 million passes the second. A US share never gets into the test at all, because it isn't a share in a Nigerian company.

Put two trades of similar size next to each other:

• Sell ₦100 million of Nigerian shares at a ₦9 million profit and the gain is exempt, because both tests are met.
• Sell $5,000 of a US share at a $900 profit and the gain is taxable from the first naira, because the exemption was never available to it.

The size of the trade isn't what decides it. Where the company is registered decides it, and that's true whether you bought the share through a Nigerian app or a foreign broker.

Is a tokenised US stock taxed differently from a real share?

Not on the structure of the tax rules themselves. The Nigeria Revenue Service's virtual asset circular, Information Circular No. 2026/21 of 31 July 2026, sorts virtual assets into six categories and puts tokenised equity in Category 3, security and investment tokens. The dollar computation rule that people associate with crypto sits in Category 1, not Category 3.

That distinction is worth more than it sounds, because it runs the opposite way to what most people assume. For a Category 1 virtual asset such as Bitcoin or a stablecoin, paragraph 9.1.1(1) says the gain is computed by reference to the dollar value at acquisition and at disposal, and only the resulting dollar gain is converted to naira at the CBN rate on the day of disposal. That takes naira weakness out of the sum.

Tokenised equity sits in a different category. So on the circular's own structure, a tokenised US share is handled as a security rather than as a crypto asset, and the naira movement between the day you bought and the day you sold stays inside the gain. The circular makes the same point from the other direction when it refers to tokenised Nigerian stocks and shares while discussing the share exemption: the wrapper doesn't change which company the share belongs to.

What it means for you: if your app sells you a tokenised US share, don't assume the crypto treatment applies to it. What are tokenised stocks, and how do they work? explains what you hold, and Crypto tax in Nigeria covers the Category 1 rules if you also hold stablecoins.

What does the US take from your dividends?

30%, taken before the money reaches you, and no treaty lowers it for a Nigerian. The IRS taxes US-source income that isn't connected to a US trade or business at a flat 30 percent, with no deductions allowed against it. A lower treaty rate is only open to residents of countries that have a US income tax treaty.

Nigeria isn't one of them. The IRS list of US income tax treaties, as at 3 January 2026, carries four African countries: Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia. A resident of any of those can claim a reduced rate on a US dividend. A Nigerian can't, so the standard 30% stands.

On a dividend-paying US stock that's a real number. A share yielding 2% returns 1.4% once the US has taken its 30%. On a growth stock that pays no dividend it costs you nothing at all, which is why the US side of this matters much more to an income investor than to someone buying for growth.

Where does Daya Stocks fit?

Daya Stocks charges 0.25% a trade, against the 1% to 1.5% a trade that daya.co/stocks gives as the usual cost of buying global stocks from Nigeria. It takes nothing to fund the account and nothing to withdraw, and you can start from $1.

On tax specifically, the thing Daya Stocks states directly is what happens to a dividend: it's reinvested into the same position, after tax. So the US withholding has already come off before the money goes back into your holding, and you aren't handed a gross figure to work backwards from.

The rest of what daya.co/stocks states matters for your records:

1. You own a token that tracks the share price rather than the certificate itself, and you don't get voting rights.
2. Positions can't be moved to an outside wallet. You sell in the app and withdraw naira, so every disposal happens in one place.
3. Trading runs 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus after-hours.
4. Verification takes a BVN, a valid ID and a selfie.
5. There are 400+ assets, covering US stocks, ETFs and exposure to gold and metals.

Where Daya Stocks isn't the pick: if you want the certificate in your own name with a broker who handles US paperwork for you, a tokenised product isn't that. And the trading fee isn't the whole cost of investing from Nigeria. The rate you get when you move naira into dollars is usually the larger number, and that's true of every app on this list, so compare the naira each one quotes you on the same amount.

What should you do before you sell?

There are five things worth doing before a sale, and you can start all of them yourself without an accountant. None of them is complicated, and the work is far easier done as you go than reconstructed later, when the only record you have is a list of trades.

1. Write down what you paid, in naira and on what date. Your gain is the difference between that and what you sell for, and nobody will reconstruct it for you three years later.
2. Keep the app's own record of every buy, sell and dividend. On Daya Stocks that's all in one place, because positions can't be moved out of the app.
3. Separate dividends from gains. The US has already taken 30% of the dividend. Nigeria taxes the gain when you sell.
4. Check which category your holding falls into if it's a tokenised share, because the computation rule differs by category.
5. Add the gain to the rest of your income for the year before you work out the rate. It isn't taxed on its own any more.

None of this is a reason to avoid US stocks. It's a reason to know what the sale will cost you before you place it, which is the one part of this you control.