Most Nigerian MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise) owners dread tax season for one reason: they have no idea what their total money coming in and going out actually was for the year.
They go looking for their figures. Some are in bank alerts saved on their phone. Some are in a WhatsApp group. Some are in a notebook from six months ago. By the time they have added it all up, they have already spent three hours — and they are not sure the number is right.
Lucrive's Tax Calculator now lets you skip all of that. You can export your bank statement as a CSV file from your internet banking portal and upload it directly. Lucrive reads the file, detects your bank's column layout automatically, and fills in your revenue and expense totals for you.
Here is exactly how to do it.
Adaeze runs a printing and branding business in Abuja. She produces flyers, banners, and branded merchandise for corporate clients. At the end of the financial year, her accountant asks for her total income and expenses. She banks with GTBank. Her statement has hundreds of transactions — salary credits, supplier payments, POS purchases, bank charges.
She used to add all of this up in Excel. It took a full day. This time, she tries the Lucrive import instead.
Every major Nigerian bank lets you download your account statement from the internet banking website (not the mobile app — mobile apps usually only give PDF). You need the CSV format, not PDF.
Here is how to find it for each bank:
Important: Download from the internet banking website, not the mobile app. Mobile apps usually only offer PDF, which cannot be imported. The website version gives you a CSV (spreadsheet) file.
The date range you choose should match the tax year you are calculating for. For most Nigerian MSMEs, the tax year runs from 1 January to 31 December.
Log in to your Lucrive account. In the left navigation menu, click Tax Calculator. This takes you to /tax-calculator.
You will see two import options near the top of the page:
For Adaeze, who has been using Lucrive for invoicing, she uses the "Import from Your Lucrive Data" button first. But her bank statement also shows income from walk-in clients who paid cash directly — so she also uploads her GTBank statement to catch those.
In the Upload Bank Statement (CSV) section, click the green "Choose CSV File" button.
Select the CSV file you downloaded from your bank.
Lucrive reads the file and automatically detects the column layout. You do not need to reformat the file or rename any columns. It works with the raw export from your bank.
Within a few seconds, you will see a confirmation message like:
✅ GTBank detected — 312 transactions processed
This tells you which bank was identified and how many transaction rows were found. Your Revenue and Expenses fields in the Tax Calculator are now filled in automatically.
Note: The CSV import fills in your Revenue (money in) and Expenses (money out) only. VAT (Value Added Tax) amounts and WHT (Withholding Tax, the tax deducted when clients pay you) must still be entered manually in the relevant sections of the Tax Calculator. These cannot be reliably detected from a bank statement — they depend on the type of transaction, not just the amount.
Lucrive detects the column layout of your statement automatically. The following Nigerian banks are currently supported:
If your bank is not on this list, the import may still work if your CSV has a recognisable column structure. The system looks for headers like "Debit", "Credit", "Narration", "Description", "Amount", and "Date" — common to most Nigerian bank exports.
After the import, scroll down and check the Revenue and Expenses figures that Lucrive has filled in. Compare them to your records to make sure they look right.
A few things to check:
Once you are satisfied with the figures, complete the rest of the Tax Calculator — enter your VAT collected and paid, your WHT credits, and any other adjustments — and Lucrive will calculate your estimated CIT (Company Income Tax), VAT payable, WHT credit, and PIT (Personal Income Tax for sole traders) automatically.
For Adaeze, the import shows ₦4,820,000 in money coming in and ₦2,310,000 in regular business costs going out for the year. She adds her VAT collected (₦91,500) and VAT paid on supplier invoices (₦38,200) manually. Lucrive shows her estimated tax position in seconds.
Most MSME owners only find out what they owe in taxes when an accountant tells them — usually weeks or months after the work has already been done. By that point, the money has often already been spent on something else.
Knowing your estimated tax position at the end of each quarter (or even each month) means you can set money aside before it is gone. The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) — the body responsible for federal taxes in Nigeria — expects businesses to file CIT returns within 90 days of their financial year-end. Being caught unprepared is a risk you can easily avoid.
The bank statement import in Lucrive makes it practical to check your tax position in under five minutes, starting from a file you can download from any bank website right now.
Export your bank statement as a CSV from your internet banking portal, go to the Tax Calculator, click "Choose CSV File", and see your revenue and expenses fill in automatically.
If you are not on Lucrive yet, the Tax Calculator is available on the free plan — no payment details needed. Get started at lucrive.io.
Sources & further reading