Black Tax

Black tax is the ongoing financial support that a working Nigerian gives to parents, siblings and extended family — school fees, rent, medical bills, emergencies — usually as the first person in the family to earn a steady income.

Key Points:

• It is not a problem by definition: for many families it is reciprocity, and the same network that is being paid back is the one that paid for the education in the first place. Treating it as dysfunction misreads it.
• When it turns into distress: no savings of your own, requests that arrive faster than income, guilt whenever you say no, and a sense that your earnings are never actually yours.
• How it shows up: chronic stress, difficulty sleeping, resentment toward people you love, anxiety about money, and postponing your own plans — a house, a wedding, further study — year after year.
• Gendered and birth-order patterns are common: first-borns and the first graduate in a family often carry the largest share, and are least likely to be asked how they are coping.
• In therapy: the work is usually about boundaries, negotiation and what you can sustain — not about cutting family off, which is rarely what the person wants or what would help.