Nigeria

On the 17^th of August, 2017, Nigeria signed two major multilateral instruments:

1. The Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting(the MLI); and
2. the CRS Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement‎ (the CRS MCAA).

Nigeria becomes the 71st jurisdiction to sign the MLI and the 94th jurisdiction to join the CRS MCAA.

The MLI is a legal instrument designed to prevent base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by multinational enterprises.

The CRS MCAA is a multilateral competent authority agreement, based on Article 6 of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which aims to implement the automatic exchange of financial account information pursuant to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and to deliver the automatic exchange of CRS information between 101 jurisdictions by 2018.

Though Nigeria has signed to the CRS MCAA, the country does not have an activated exchange relationship. There is a process to this activation.

A few jurisdictions that have signed up but not activated this exchange relationship because these jurisdictions have not yet submitted a full set of notifications, either because:

1. they are either still in the process of adopting domestic legislation; and/or
2. because they are still putting in place the operational and IT framework in particular to implement the required standards on confidentiality, data safeguards and proper use of the information.