If you searched this in English you got two sets of results that appear to contradict each other. Older articles, most vendor pages and much of the official documentation still say FIRS. Newer ones say NRS. Neither is wrong, and the confusion costs people more time than the underlying rules do. So, the naming first.
What changed, and what did not
The Federal Inland Revenue Service was renamed the Nigeria Revenue Service under the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025, which was signed in June 2025 and took effect on 1 January 2026. The Service unveiled its new identity at the turn of the year, and it now sits alongside three companion laws that commenced on the same date — the Nigeria Tax Act 2025, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 and the Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act 2025.
The useful part for a restaurant owner: this was not a change of regulator. Same institution, same collection mandate, in most cases the same officers. A FIRS circular from 2024 on how VAT applies to your sales is still telling the truth. Treat with suspicion anything dated before 2026 that describes thresholds, penalties or exemptions — those genuinely were rewritten by the 2025 Acts.
You will also notice the old name persisting in places you might not expect, including the e-invoicing portal address. That is a migration artefact, not a sign you are on the wrong site.
The e-invoicing platform, and which phase you are in
Nigeria’s system is the E-Invoicing and Electronic Fiscal System, usually called the Merchant Buyer Solution or MBS. Its legal backing sits in the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025, which empowers the Service to deploy technology for tax administration and obliges taxpayers to adopt the fiscalisation system it introduces.
The rollout runs by turnover band, in the same pattern most countries have used.
| Segment | Annual turnover | Go-live | Enforcement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Large | ₦5 billion and above | 1 Nov 2025, after a 1 Aug 2025 start was deferred | from 2026 |
| Medium | ₦1 billion – ₦5 billion | 1 July 2026 | first quarter of 2027 |
| Emerging | below ₦1 billion | 1 July 2027 | first quarter of 2028 |
Published accounts of when enforcement began for the large band differ — some say January 2026, others mid-2026 — so if you are near ₦5 billion, take that date from the NRS itself. For everyone else it is clear enough. A single restaurant, or a small group, sits in the emerging band: go-live 1 July 2027, enforcement not expected until 2028. You have time, but not enough to leave it out of this year’s plan.
Where a restaurant actually sits in the model
This matters more than the date, because Nigeria treats B2B and B2C differently.
B2B and B2G invoices go through a clearance model: the invoice is transmitted to the platform before or at issuance, validated, and returned with an invoice reference number. Nothing is legitimate until it comes back.
Consumer sales do not work that way. A restaurant issues the receipt immediately, with no pre-clearance, and reports the transaction to the Service afterwards — advisers describe a twenty-four hour window, with a per-invoice value trigger and daily penalties for late reporting. Those figures come from practitioner summaries rather than a statute we can point you at, so treat the twenty-four hours as the shape of the obligation and confirm the numbers locally.
The operational consequence is the same in every country that has gone down this road: your till becomes the system of record for something outside the restaurant. A day’s sales that exist only as a paper roll in a drawer cannot be reported at all.
VAT at 7.5%, and whether you charge it
Nigeria’s VAT rate is 7.5%, unchanged since February 2020, and it applies to restaurant sales. What the 2025 Acts changed is who has to deal with it: small businesses below a defined turnover threshold are relieved of the obligation to charge VAT and file VAT returns. The figure most commonly cited is gross turnover of ₦100 million or less with fixed assets under ₦250 million, but advisers have flagged an inconsistency in how the Nigeria Tax Act and the Nigeria Tax Administration Act draw their small-business lines, with ₦50 million appearing in one reading. If your turnover sits between those figures, that is a question for a Nigerian tax adviser, not a software vendor. Our sister site yunyafx.com covers the registration and filing side in more depth.
What we can and cannot do for you here
We can make the till hold a proper transaction record, print a receipt that shows VAT as a stated amount rather than folded invisibly into the price, and export a clean day or month for whoever files. We can also make it keep working when the line drops, which in practice is the difference between having a reportable record and not — see when the internet goes down.
What we will not say is that MiYaDine is integrated with the MBS platform or accredited by the NRS. Fiscal integrations are market by market — we have them in some of the 100+ countries our customers trade in and not in others — and this is the kind of claim that is easy to check and expensive to get wrong. Tell us where the shop is and we will confirm the position before you buy.
Checked against the sources named above on 2026-09-20. Rules and platform terms change — confirm anything tax-related with a local accountant before you rely on it.
