The Nigerian Payroll Compliance Calendar for 2026

Running payroll in Nigeria is not one deadline. It is five or six, each owned by a different agency, each with its own clock and its own penalty. Miss the 10th and a state tax office adds interest. Deduct pension but remit it late and you have committed a criminal offence under the pension law. The rules did not get simpler in 2026 — the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (NTA 2025) took effect on 1 January 2026 and reshaped PAYE, but the remittance calendar around it is as unforgiving as ever.

This is the calendar. Every date below is tied to the agency that enforces it and a source you can check.

The monthly rhythm

Most payroll obligations repeat every month, keyed to the day you actually pay salaries — not the last day of the month, not "whenever cash clears." Here is the recurring cycle for a company that pays staff on, say, the 25th.

Two things changed under NTA 2025 that touch this table. NHF is now voluntary — an employee can opt out, and if they do, you have nothing to remit for them. And PAYE itself is computed on the new bands (0% on the first ₦800,000 of annual taxable income, then 15%, 18%, 21%, 23%, 25%), with the old Consolidated Relief Allowance gone and Rent Relief — min(20% × annual rent, ₦500,000) — in its place. The deadline did not move. The arithmetic did.

The pension clock is the tightest and the most dangerous. "7 working days" from payday is roughly a week and a half of calendar time. Deducting the money and holding it past that window is not a late fee — PenCom treats unremitted employee deductions as a criminal matter.

The annual deadlines

Three obligations land once a year. They are easy to forget precisely because they are not monthly — which is why January and March are the danger months for Nigerian employers.

Two notes worth pinning down. The Form H1 must reconcile to the sum of your twelve monthly PAYE remittances — a state office that finds a gap between the two will ask why. And ITF only applies to employers with 5 or more employees, or annual turnover of ₦50 million or more; below both thresholds you are outside the net (confirm your status with the ITF directly, as some guidance still quotes a 25-employee figure).

A worked example: one pay cycle, five clocks

Take a Lagos company that pays staff on 25 January 2026. Monthly figures:

• Total gross payroll: ₦3,000,000
• Total pensionable pay (basic + housing + transport): ₦2,000,000
• Total basic salary: ₦1,500,000
• PAYE withheld for the month (computed on the NTA 2025 bands): ₦300,000 (illustrative)

Here is everything that falls due, and when:

From a single payday on 25 January, this employer has four separate remittance deadlines inside three weeks, plus two annual filings in the same quarter. That is the real shape of Nigerian payroll compliance: not hard arithmetic, but a scheduling problem with five different referees.

Note what the example does not do: it does not invent a PAYE figure from thin air. The ₦300,000 is illustrative — your actual PAYE depends on each employee's taxable pay after Rent Relief and pension, run through the 2026 bands. For the full bracket-by-bracket method, see the PAYE guide linked below.

The penalty side (why the dates matter)

Late remittance is not free anywhere in this system:

• PAYE: interest plus penalty on the outstanding tax, assessed by the state office.
• Pension: a penalty of not less than 2% of the unpaid contribution for each month of default, on top of the amount owed — PRA 2014 s.11(7).
• NSITF: 5% of the unpaid amount added for each month late.
• ITF: 5% of the unpaid contribution for each month of default.
• NHF: a fixed fine for failure to deduct or remit.

Honest limit: exact penalty amounts and any grace treatment vary by state IRS and change over time. Treat the figures above as the statutory floor and confirm your specific exposure with the named agency before relying on a number in a dispute.

Does AnooreHR handle this?

Yes — the calendar is the point. AnooreHR runs Nigerian payroll on a country profile pack, so PAYE bands, pension splits, NHF, NSITF and ITF rules live in data that tracks the NTA 2025 changes, not in code you have to patch. Every run posts straight into a shared double-entry ledger, so the amounts you owe each agency and the dates they are due are computed once and visible in one place — with the AI assistant flagging anomalies for a human to approve, never filing on its own. Nigeria is live today; other African countries are on the roadmap as their own profile packs. Book a quick demo to see a full month's obligations mapped from a single payroll run.

Related reading: How to compute PAYE in Nigeria, The Nigerian pension contribution guide, NSITF and ITF employer obligations 2026