Fri, 08 Sep 2017 13:10:45 +0000
By Buumba Chimbulu
THE Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) has encour-aged all bank account holders to obtain Taxpayers Identification Numbers (TPINs) before December 31st 2017 which is the deadline.
The TPIN is a unique 13-digit number given to each taxpayer and it is a pre-requisite to all procedures of tax registration under domestic taxes and customs di-visions.
ZRA Commissioner General, Kingsley Chanda, said the deadline for all account holders to obtain TPINS remained December 31st 2017 and that they hoped that all taxpayers would have obtained them by then.
“The TPIN exercise is going very well as we said at the beginning of this year, the very deadline is 31st De-cember 2017, we hope and trust that all account hold-ers will have obtained their TPINS and if taxpayers are having challenges in getting TPINS we are open, you can come to our offices we are able to assist,” he said.
Mr. Chanda said in an interview in Lusaka that com-mercial banks had come on board assisting the ZRA with information used in expediting the registration of TPINS.
He warned that obtaining a TPIN by all account hold-ers was law which must be followed by all taxpayers failure to which they risked facing consequences.
“Anyone who does not comply with the law, they break it and it has consequences, it is a legal require-ment that if you have an account, you should have a TPIN and will be liaising with banks to ensure that happens,” he said.
Mr. Chanda also said the authority was currently over 80 percent of payments electronically on average and almost 100 percent for big taxpayers.
He explained that this was partly as a result of some partnerships with private entities such as Airtel Zam-bia.
He emphasised that the authority’s focus was to ensure Zambians became tax compliant for development of the country.
