Estimate duty, levy and VAT on a vehicle to find its landed cost.
Landed cost
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Import duty
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Levy
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VAT
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How Customs stacks the charges on a car
Importing a vehicle into Nigeria is not a single tax but a small pile of them, applied in a set order, and the order is what catches people out. Everything starts from the CIF value, which stands for cost, insurance and freight: the price of the car plus what it cost to insure and ship it to a Nigerian port. Import duty is charged as a percentage of CIF. A levy may sit on top, also as a percentage of CIF. Then VAT at 7.5 percent is charged not on the bare CIF but on CIF plus duty plus levy. Add it all together and you have the landed cost, the real naira figure to budget for. This tool lets you enter the duty and levy rates yourself, because those are the numbers that move.
One distinction worth holding firmly: of the three charges, only the VAT rate is fixed in this calculator, at the 7.5 percent standard rate. The duty and levy percentages are inputs you supply. The tool opens with 20 percent duty and 15 percent levy as illustrative defaults so you have a starting point, but those are not law as far as this page is concerned. Vehicle tariff rates depend on the type and age of the vehicle and are set out in the Customs tariff, so look up the figures that apply to your car and confirm them with the Nigeria Customs Service before you trust the total.
Landing a NGN 12 million vehicle
Work through the opening example: a CIF value of NGN 12 million, with the default 20 percent duty and 15 percent levy, and VAT switched on. Duty comes to NGN 2,400,000 and the levy to NGN 1,800,000, both straight percentages of CIF. The VAT base is then CIF plus duty plus levy, NGN 16,200,000, and 7.5 percent of that is NGN 1,215,000. Stack everything and the landed cost is NGN 17,415,000, of which NGN 5,415,000 is taxes on a car that cost NGN 12 million to buy and bring in.
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Why VAT sits on top of duty and levy
It feels like being taxed on a tax, and in a sense you are. VAT is charged on the duty-inclusive value because the charge base is the full value of the imported goods as Customs assesses it, which by design includes the duty and levy already added. That is why turning the VAT switch off in the tool drops the bill by more than a flat 7.5 percent of CIF: the VAT you remove was sitting on the larger CIF-plus-duty-plus-levy base. If you are comparing a local purchase with an import, this stacking is the hidden reason the imported option can land far above the foreign sticker price once everything compounds.
Reading the tariff and the FX rate
Two inputs deserve care because they swing the answer hardest. The first is the duty and levy rates: enter the exact percentages for your vehicle class from the current Customs tariff rather than leaving the defaults, since an older or larger-engine car can attract very different rates. The second is the CIF value itself, which Customs converts using an official exchange rate that may differ from the rate you paid your bank. If the naira value Customs assesses is higher than your own conversion, every downstream charge rises with it. A common mistake is to budget off the purchase price in dollars and forget that duty, levy, and VAT all ride on the assessed naira CIF. Confirm both the applicable rates and the assessment basis with the Nigeria Customs Service, with the Federal Inland Revenue Service relevant only for the VAT element.
Does the calculator include port and clearing charges?
No. It estimates the statutory taxes, namely duty, levy, and VAT, on the CIF value. Real-world clearing also brings terminal handling, agent fees, and other port charges that vary by location and are not taxes, so add those separately when you build your full budget. Treat the landed cost here as the tax-and-CIF figure, not the all-in cost on the road.
Why do duty rates differ so much between cars?
Because the Customs tariff distinguishes vehicles by category, engine size, and age, and policy can favour or discourage particular types. That is exactly why this tool leaves duty and levy as your inputs rather than hard-coding them. Pull the correct figures for your specific vehicle from the Nigeria Customs Service tariff and type them in, rather than assuming the 20 and 15 percent defaults apply to you.