By STEVEN ZANDE and FRANCINA PHIRI –

.ZRA

THE process of registration for withholding tax has received overwhelming response from the public, Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) head of public relations Topsy Sikalinda has said.
“This is good because every citizen has a duty to meet their obligation in terms of taxation,” Mr Sikalinda said.
He said this in an interview yesterday.
Mr Sikalinda said landlords were coming in numbers to register for withholding tax and this had indicated that people were being compliant.
He said the law had been in existence from the 1970s and people should not cite ignorance because the matter had been publicised.
ZRA has set March 1, 2018 as deadline for the landlords to register for withholding tax after which the Authority will still be enforcing the law.
Mr Sikalinda said voluntary registration was more beneficial than waiting for ZRA to enforce the law because this could attract penalties.
ZRA has, meanwhile, said that it has recorded an increase of more than 1,500 Tax Payers Identification Numbers (TPIN) registration, which is impressive.
Mr Sikalinda said the Authority had so far registered 335,000 TPINs from January 2017 to January 2018.
He said ZRA had met its set target of about 87,000 and that many people were applying, and was optimistic that everyone would have registered by the dead line.
Mr Sikalinda said in an interview that ZRA would not extend the deadline of TPIN registration and had, therefore, advised the general public to do so before March 31, 2018.
Mr Sikalinda said that the Authority will freeze all bank accounts whose holders would not have a TPIN number before the set deadline.
He said that ZRA will not be deducting any money from people’s accounts as it was only an identification initiative by ZRA for bank holders.