Sri Lanka’s mandatory tax registration for citizens above 18 years old is pushed back indefinitely as the Government tries to solve the administrative issues involved in the process, State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said.
Speaking in an interview with TV Derana yesterday (7), he said that even though the Government initially planned to make obtaining a Tax Identification Number (TIN) mandatory from 1 January onwards, they were forced to give some more time for the implementation.
The Government planned to make obtaining a TIN mandatory in the purchase of assets, motor vehicles and opening a current account in a bank, “but we saw that there was a lot of work that needed to be completed for it,” he added.
Already, with the help of tax file registration which was done voluntarily, the number of taxpayer files has exceeded the 1 million mark as of the end of 2023 and according to the State Minister, the Government intends to add more files in 2024 before providing tax relief in the form of indirect taxes first and then direct taxes.
State Minister Siyamabalapitiya said that there are employee and equipment issues in maintaining and running the government databases chosen for the TIN registration such as the database of the Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) and the database of the Department of Registration of Persons.
Moreover, he said that it was revealed that the TIN registration would incur about Rs. 2 billion in postal charges for the respective departments.
“We had several rounds of discussions and we can solve everything by this week, based on that we will announce a date from which this can be practically made mandatory,” he said.
In January, the Finance Ministry extended the deadline for all citizens over 18 to obtain a TIN to 1 April 2024, due to technical issues and staff shortages at the Inland Revenue Department (IRD).