NSITF + ITF in 2026: Nigerian employer obligations after NTA 2025

NSITF and ITF are the two Nigerian statutory levies most commonly confused — or quietly ignored — by small employers. Both are 1% of something. Both are employer-only, never deducted from employee pay. Both have regulators that have become visibly more assertive since 2022. And both were left untouched by the Nigeria Tax Act 2025, which rewrote almost everything else on the Nigerian payroll statement on 1 January 2026.

This guide disentangles them: what each is, who owes it, on what base, and what happens if you don't pay.

At a glance

Levy	Full name	Rate	Base	Side	Threshold to apply
NSITF	Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund	1%	Gross pay	Employer	Any employer with a single employee
ITF	Industrial Training Fund	1%	Annual gross payroll	Employer	5+ employees or ₦50M+ turnover

Both levies are employer overhead, not deductions from staff. They don't appear on the payslip; they appear on your P&L.

What changed under NTA 2025

Nothing material. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 rewrote PAYE brackets, abolished the CRA, made NHF voluntary, and consolidated TET + NITDA + NASENI + PTF into a single 4% Development Levy — but it explicitly preserved NSITF and ITF as standalone levies under their founding Acts.

What did change is the enforcement climate around them:

• NSITF — compliance bulletins issued since 2023 have tightened monthly remittance deadlines and expanded the named-employer list. Random desk audits now routinely pull 12 months of payroll evidence.
• ITF — the 2024 notice on reskilling levy made ITF compliance a precondition for several federal contracts and export clearances. If you do any government or export business, missing ITF no longer just generates a penalty — it can disqualify you from a tender.

Treat "the law is the same" and "the enforcement is the same" as two different statements. The law is the same. Enforcement is not.

1. NSITF — the employee compensation levy

NSITF is Nigeria's equivalent of a workers' compensation scheme. The fund pays benefits to employees (or their families) for work-related injury, disability, or death. The employer finances it entirely.

The numbers:

NSITF = 1% of gross pay, remitted monthly, employer-only.

Gross pay here means total emoluments — basic + all allowances + overtime + bonuses. Not "BHT only" (that's pension), not "basic only" (that's NHF). The full gross.

For an employee on ₦500,000 monthly gross:

Monthly NSITF = ₦500,000 × 1% = ₦5,000 Annual NSITF = ₦5,000 × 12 = ₦60,000

Across a 20-person payroll at an average ₦400,000 gross, that's about ₦960,000/year in NSITF that never appears on a payslip but absolutely appears on the employer's expense ledger.

Registration, remittance, records:

• Register with NSITF at incorporation if you have any employee. The scheme is not size-gated.
• Remit monthly — typically by the 10th of the following month; confirm the exact day with your NSITF office since the payment platform has updated since 2023.
• Keep remittance receipts for at least 6 years. Claims investigations can reach back that far.

Penalty for non-payment: 10% of the unpaid contribution, plus daily interest on the arrears. Not capped. The 10% applies every time you're late, not once.

2. ITF — the training and development levy

ITF funds the national pool for industrial skills training. Employers pay in; later, they can claim reimbursement of up to 50% of the levy if they sponsor approved training programmes for staff. Most SMEs pay and never claim — the reimbursement paperwork is real work.

The numbers:

ITF = 1% of annual gross payroll, remitted annually, employer-only — if you meet either threshold.

Thresholds are ≥5 employees or ≥₦50,000,000 annual turnover (including capitalised inventory). Either one triggers the obligation; you do not need both.

For a company with 20 employees × ₦400,000 average gross × 12 months = ₦96,000,000 annual payroll:

Annual ITF = ₦96,000,000 × 1% = ₦960,000

If neither threshold is met (a four-person firm with ₦40M turnover), ITF does not apply. Document the non-applicability — don't just not pay.

Registration, remittance, records:

• Register with ITF once you cross either threshold.
• Remit annually, typically by 1 April for the preceding fiscal year — confirm the current deadline on the ITF portal since it has been adjusted since 2022.
• Keep training records if you plan to claim the 50% reimbursement. No training logs = no reimbursement, even if the training happened.

Penalty for non-payment: 5% of the unpaid levy per month of default under the ITF Act (as amended). Compounding. ITF does pursue this — 2024 notices name-and-shame persistent defaulters.

3. Why the bases differ — and why it matters

A recurring spreadsheet bug: someone computes both NSITF and ITF on the same base and gets the wrong figure for one of them. They are deliberately different:

Levy	Base	Why
NSITF	Gross pay (monthly, per employee)	The benefit is employee-specific (injury/death compensation), so the base tracks the individual's earnings each month
ITF	Annual gross payroll (firm-wide)	The benefit is firm-specific (training the workforce), so the base is the firm's total wage bill per year

Getting them swapped is a common reconciliation issue. Good payroll software keeps the two on completely separate account codes — typically 2050 NSITF Payable and 2060 ITF Payable on the liability side, with matching expense lines.

4. Interaction with the rest of the 2026 statutory stack

Here's how the employer-side levies stack for a 20-person firm with a ₦96M annual payroll:

Levy	Base	Rate	Annual cost
Pension (employer)	BHT (typically 75–80% of gross)	10%	~₦7,680,000
NSITF	Gross pay	1%	₦960,000
ITF (if in scope)	Gross payroll	1%	₦960,000
Total employer-side statutory	—	—	~₦9,600,000

That's roughly 10% of gross payroll as pure employer overhead on top of salaries — before any office lease, equipment, or headcount expansion. Factor this into offer letters; many employers quote a "total cost of employment" on internal dashboards because the gross-pay figure understates it by an order of magnitude that matters for hiring plans.

See our PAYE under NTA 2025 guide for the employee-side statutory picture and the pension guide for the PRA 2014 mechanics.

Common mistakes

1. Treating NSITF and ITF as "the same 1% levy." They are not. Different bases, different remittance cadences (monthly vs annual), different regulators, different penalties.
2. Forgetting NSITF for small teams. NSITF has no employee threshold. A one-person company with one director-employee still owes 1% of that employee's gross pay to NSITF, monthly.
3. Skipping ITF because "we only have 4 employees." If your annual turnover crosses ₦50M, ITF applies regardless of headcount. The "or" in the threshold rule is binding.
4. Computing ITF on basic salary. It is on total annual payroll — gross, including allowances and bonuses. Underpaying once triggers compounding penalties.
5. Paying ITF but not claiming reimbursement after running training. If you sponsored approved training courses, you are owed up to 50% of the levy back. Paperwork is onerous but the money is real.
6. Confusing NSITF with NHIS / NHIA. NSITF is employer-only, 1% of gross, injury/death compensation. NHIS/NHIA is a health insurance scheme with different rates and employer enrolment rules. They do not substitute for each other.
7. Assuming NTA 2025 replaced either levy. It didn't. NTA 2025 folded four other levies (TET + NITDA + NASENI + PTF) into the new 4% Development Levy. NSITF and ITF were preserved separately.

Historical context: the founding Acts

Pre-2022 authority — kept here for reference, not as the headline rule:

• NSITF Act 2010 (replacing the Workmen's Compensation Act) established the current employer-financed benefit regime.
• ITF Act 2011 (amended) set the 1% levy, the employee/turnover threshold, and the reimbursement mechanism.

Both founding Acts are still in force; neither has been superseded. NTA 2025 explicitly left them intact. The current 2024–2026 compliance bulletins from each regulator are the practical authority for how the Acts are enforced today.

Does AnooreHR handle this?

Yes — AnooreHR computes NSITF monthly on gross pay per employee, computes ITF annually on total payroll (with the 5-employee and ₦50M-turnover threshold test built in), posts both to their own GL accounts (2050 / 2060 liability, 6030 / 6040 expense), and warns you before the monthly NSITF deadline via in-app notification. Threshold changes or rate changes under future Acts flow in through the country profile pack — no code change, no reconciliation scramble.

Want to sanity-check your current NSITF + ITF position under the new compliance climate? Book a quick demo — bring one recent monthly payroll schedule and last year's turnover figure, and we'll model both levies live.

Related: How AnooreHR handles payroll · See pricing