Gift Card Tax in Nigeria and Ghana 2026: What Sellers Actually Owe

Selling a card you were given is usually not a taxable event. Selling cards every week is. Here's how Nigeria and Ghana treat gift card income in 2026.

Both sides of the border moved. Nigeria replaced its tax laws on 1 January 2026 and folded capital gains into income tax. Ghana scrapped the 1 percent E-Levy on mobile money in April 2025 and rebuilt how VAT is charged. One thing didn't move. We don't take tax out of your payout, so the figure on the rates board is the figure that reaches your account.

The short answer: gift, side income, or business

Tax follows the activity, not the card. Sell the card you got for your birthday and you're clearing out a personal item. Buy ten cards a month to flip them and you're running a trade, and trades pay tax.

Nobody at GiftCash NG asks which row you're in. But if you're in the bottom half of that table, the records you keep in October are the ones you'll want in March.

What changed in Nigeria on 1 January 2026

The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 and the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 took effect on 1 January 2026, and together they replaced a stack of older laws. The Federal Inland Revenue Service is now the Nigeria Revenue Service, which is worth knowing if you still search for FIRS.

Two changes matter to anyone selling cards.

First, the flat 10 percent capital gains rate is gone. That number is still all over the internet, including on pages we used to point readers to. Individual chargeable gains now join your other income and are taxed on the same bands as everything else: the first ₦800,000 at 0 percent, then rates from 15 percent rising to 25 percent for the largest incomes. If your whole income for the year sits inside that first band, the gain costs you nothing. Minimum-wage earners are exempt outright.

Second, the taxable event is a disposal at a gain. Selling, swapping, or paying with an asset all count as disposal. Digital assets are now expressly chargeable, which matters if you take a payout in USDT and hold it before converting to naira.

Personal items are still treated gently. The Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee's own summary lists personal effects and chattels worth up to ₦5 million as exempt from capital gains, next to one private home and up to two private vehicles a year. The same summary puts the small-company line that decides who charges VAT at ₦100 million of turnover, so most one-person card operations never collect it. VAT itself stayed at 7.5 percent. Any guide still quoting a ₦25 million VAT threshold is describing the law that was repealed.

Ghana: the E-Levy is gone and VAT now totals 20 percent

Ghana went the other way and made small payments cheaper. The Ghana Revenue Authority confirmed the 1 percent Electronic Transfer Levy was abolished with effect from 2 April 2025. If you sell in Accra and take a mobile money payout, that 1 percent is no longer taken out on the way through.

VAT was rebuilt from 1 January 2026 under the Value Added Tax Act 2025. The rate is 15 percent, plus 2.5 percent for the National Health Insurance Levy and 2.5 percent for the GETFund Levy, which comes to 20 percent on the taxable value. The 1 percent COVID-19 Health Recovery Levy is gone and the flat rate scheme was retired. The registration threshold for goods moved from GH₵200,000 to GH₵750,000, which pulls thousands of small sellers out of the VAT system.

What didn't change is the shape of the rule. Buy a card, resell it above what you paid, and the profit is income. Do that every week and the GRA treats it as a trade, the same as it would treat a market stall in Kejetia.

What a $100 card pays today

We read the GiftCash NG rates board on 14 October 2026. Here's a $100 card priced in both currencies.

Nothing is deducted on the way out. The figure on the board is the figure that arrives, by bank transfer or mobile money, usually inside 15 to 30 minutes of the card clearing. In Ghana that means MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash, or AT Money. In Nigeria it means your bank account. If you owe tax on the income, that conversation happens between you and the revenue authority, not at the point of payout.

Look at the spread inside that table, because it matters more than any tax question on a single card. A $100 Apple or iTunes card pays ₦111,827. The same $100 on an Amazon card pays ₦65,233, a difference of ₦46,594. Check what your card is really worth on the live rates board before you accept a number from anyone.

The records that save you an argument

If you sell more than the occasional card, start this list at your first sale. It takes two minutes a week.

1. Date of the sale, the card brand, and the face value.
2. What you paid for the card, if you bought it, and where.
3. What you were paid, in naira or cedis, and the band the rate came from.
4. The platform or buyer, plus the reference number on the transfer.
5. Your bank or mobile money statement for the month, saved as a PDF.

A ₦2,000 sale you can explain is worth more than a ₦20,000 one you can't. Both countries now expect a paper trail, and the receipts are also what protects you when a card you passed on gets flagged later. Our checklist for confirming a card balance before you sell covers the checks that stop a sale turning into a dispute.

Where to confirm your own position

We quote the law. We don't practise it, and two things decide your answer: whether selling cards is a trade or a one-off, and what your total income for the year looks like.

In Nigeria, the Nigeria Revenue Service handles federal taxes while your state internal revenue service handles personal income tax and direct assessment, so a Lagos seller and a Kano seller file with different offices. In Ghana, it's the Ghana Revenue Authority. If you're moving volume, an accountant costs less than a misunderstanding, and our import and export guide walks through the paperwork side of running card sales properly.

Then get the number right. A naira calculator or a cedis calculator turns any face value into today's payout in a couple of seconds. When you're ready to sell, we price cards like Apple and iTunes, Steam, eBay, Amazon, and Google Play. Apple and iTunes sit at the top of today's board and Xbox sits at the bottom. Start on the rates page, pick your card, and the payout is the number you see.