Preparing a company return in HopperTax

Part 4 gave you the law of company taxation. This part puts it behind a steering wheel: the HopperTax company filing track, which turns a company's year into a filed CIT return in six steps.

The steps are Company identity, Revenue, Expenses, Capital allowances, Payroll & VAT, and Your CIT position, and the order is Part 4's formula made walkable. Company identity captures the company's registered name and RC number exactly as they appear at the CAC, the financial year end that starts the six-month filing clock, and the turnover figure that drives the small-company outcome. Revenue takes the year's income from every stream of the trade, and the discipline here is reconciliation: the figure must tie to the company's books and statements, remembering that not everything that enters a bank account is revenue. Loans, capital injections and inter-account transfers are not income, and sweeping bank credits into the revenue line overstates profit and tax alike.

Expenses captures the running costs in categories: rent and utilities, transport and logistics, professional and regulatory fees, marketing and sales, interest and bank charges, and other allowable costs, each holding to Part 4's wholly-and-exclusively test. Capital allowances is where the lasting assets go, the van, the machinery, the fit-out, entered as assets attracting the year's allowances rather than dumped into expenses. Payroll & VAT records the company's employer and VAT posture, which the return itself needs and which sets up the monthly obligations you will manage for the client afterwards.

Then the track computes Your CIT position with the same code that produced Part 4's worked examples. For a small company the position shows the exemption; for a larger one it shows CIT at 30% plus the 4% Development Levy. Two professional habits complete the number. First, the hand check: thirty percent of the profit, plus four percent, compared to the screen, to the naira. Second, the small-company test done properly: the product keys the exemption on the ₦100,000,000 turnover cap, and the certified agent confirms the other arm, fixed assets within ₦250,000,000, and the professional-services carve-outs, before telling any director their tax is zero.

The commercial close mirrors Part 3 at company scale. Preparation is free, so the directors can read the whole computation before deciding anything; filing costs ₦50,000, and paying it unlocks print and download of the package as well. The engagement runs the same portal pipeline, intake to filed, with the company's officers reviewing and approving at the approval stage, since it is their return. And unlike an individual engagement, a company client does not end at filed: the VAT and PAYE months keep coming, which is why Part 4 called company work a retainer relationship and why Part 8 teaches you to run that calendar across a whole roster.

The part closes with the company-track mistakes that actually happen: bank credits mistaken for revenue, machines expensed instead of entered as assets, the year end entered wrongly so every deadline shifts, and exemptions promised before the test was actually run. Ten questions later, Part 6 takes the finished return to the authority.