Nigeria’s tax framework is evolving, forcing a quiet but fundamental rethinking of how businesses manage their finances.
The 2024 Withholding Tax (WHT) Regulations and the upcoming Nigerian Tax Act not only raise compliance expectations, but also shorten the distance between payments, record-keeping and tax payments. What was once a year-end accounting process is increasingly becoming a real-time operational requirement.
At a recent ecosystem event, Bugetti’s leadership frankly explained this change. Compliance is no longer an administrative afterthought, but is becoming a core financial infrastructure.
Founded to give businesses greater control over spend, workflow, and visibility, Bujeti is now focused on so-called “tax intelligence,” which embeds tax logic directly into day-to-day financial operations.
From bank account to financial cockpit
Bujeti’s core positioning is intentionally differentiated from traditional digital banking. Rather than optimizing transaction volumes, the platform is designed around controlling who can do what, within what budget, and with what downstream tax impact. CEO Cossi Achille Arouko describes the product as a financial “cockpit” rather than a bank account.
“Banks are created for money to go in and out,” Alouco said. “We’re building everything that needs to be controlled before and after it happens.”
The distinction is important. Banks are structurally incentivized to maximize throughput. Bujeti is built to manage the flow of funds before approval, at execution time, and after settlement.
Through a single dashboard, businesses can manage:
Corporate cards and expense policies Team or departmental budget allocation Invoicing and collections Multi-level approval workflows
Real-time visibility into debt, including tax exposure
This architecture is particularly relevant under Nigeria’s new tax regulations, where errors at the transaction stage (misclassification, missing documentation, fraudulent disbursements) can lead to non-compliance and permanent cash loss.
Central to Bujeti’s current strategy is tax automation built directly into workflows.
The platform supports automatic calculation of withholding tax (WHT) and value added tax (VAT) based on transaction type and incorporates Nigerian tax rules into payment execution rather than post-transaction reporting. This reduces reliance on manual interpretation, spreadsheets, and retrospective reconciliations for finance teams.
Bujeti also operates as an Access Point Provider (APP) to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), allowing eligible businesses to pay taxes directly from the platform.
According to the company, this approach serves two main purposes. One is to reduce non-compliance that exposes companies to penalties and regulatory scrutiny. There is also the prevention of overpayments, which quietly deplete liquidity in a system where refunds are rare and difficult to obtain.
“Once money leaves your account as taxes, it’s almost impossible to get it back,” Alouco said. “So the real value is in stopping mistakes before they get paid.”
The platform also includes a “tax vault,” which allows companies to ring-fence the funds they use to meet their tax obligations. This has become an increasingly important cash management discipline as enforcement tightens and filing periods shorten.
Why small businesses are most at risk
While large enterprises struggle with complexity, small businesses face the highest compliance risks.
Nigeria’s tax reform has led to contradictions. Businesses with an annual turnover of less than £50 million may be subject to zero-rate corporation income tax under the new law, but they still face strict reporting requirements. Failure to file may result in complete loss of tax-exempt status.
Egwi Nnanna, senior product manager at Bujeti, argues that this is where automation is most important.
“Most small businesses don’t go out of business because they don’t want to comply,” Nanna said. “They fail because compliance relies on memorization, manual tracking, or expensive and inconsistent external advisors.”
Small businesses often lack in-house tax expertise, rely on piecemeal tools, or outsource compliance at costs disproportionate to their size. Platforms like Bujeti aim to make compliance the default rather than optional by automating tax calculations and incorporating it into everyday transactions.
This is particularly relevant to the 2024 WHT Regulations, which impose higher tax rates on vendors who do not have a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), effectively forcing businesses to verify who they do business with before making payments.
Edidiong Ekong, Growth and Marketing Advisor at Bujeti, shared the thinking behind the product. “We believe the strength of this launch will create tailwinds for Bujeti’s nationwide adoption. With the combined effect of the new tax law and Bujeti’s intelligent distribution, this product has the potential to become one of Nigeria’s top three fintechs within a year.” Caleb Nnamani, who drives storytelling and PR for the company, echoed similar sentiments.
Control as governance rather than micromanagement
Beyond taxes, Bujeti positions itself as a governance tool for growing organizations.
Finance managers can pre-set spending rules, such as “don’t pay without a receipt” or “don’t spend outside of the approved budget,” and allow the system to automatically apply them. Once the policy is enabled, it no longer relies on manual monitoring or internal policing.
“You don’t have to chase people down and revisit everything after the fact,” Alouco says. “If the rules are set, the system will enforce them.”
For CFOs and founders, this moves governance from being reactive to being proactive.
Reduced unexpected debt Increased confidence in banks, auditors and investors
Because transaction records cannot be changed retroactively, Bujeti also acts as a trust layer, especially useful during audits, financing, and regulatory reviews.
Build ambitions beyond borders
Although the immediate focus is Nigeria, Bugetti’s roadmap reflects Africa’s broader realities.
The platform already supports trading in the Naira, US Dollar, and Kenyan Shilling, and plans to expand to Ghanaian, French markets, and additional currencies such as the Euro and British Pound Sterling.
This is important as cross-border business expansion creates new tax risks, particularly regarding permanent establishments, VAT registration thresholds and multi-currency reporting. An integrated system that stores transaction-level data across markets simplifies compliance and reduces blind spots that often surface only during audits.
Why is this important beyond Bugetti?
Nigeria’s tax reform is not unique. Across Africa, regulators are calling for greater formalization, better transaction data and more predictable revenue collection.
What has changed is the mechanism. Compliance is moving closer to the payments layer, and software platforms are becoming intermediaries between businesses and tax authorities.
Bugetti bets that companies will increasingly prefer systems that make compliance inevitable but painless, rather than manual workarounds to avoid ambiguity.
For founders and CFOs, the implications are clear. The cost of weak financial infrastructure is rising. In a more formalized tax environment, control is no longer a luxury but a risk management.
