The Ningo Prampram District Director of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), Ms. Gifty Agyeiwaa Badu, has challenged Ghanaians to acquire their Tax Identification Numbers (PIN) to enable them transact official businesses.

She said, “The PIN has been available for a long time, but this time around the government is saying without it, one cannot undertake certain business transactions in Ghana.”

She said this on Sunday during one of NCCE and Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) collaborative campaigns on tax compliance which was dubbed “our taxes our future”, at the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Mataheko branch, in the Ningo Prampram District.

Responding to whether the unemployed could acquire the PIN, she said, “Go to the various GRA offices closer to you and obtain it because it is for free.”

She said NCCE was doing its bid to inform the public about the need to pay taxes, but lack of motivation to read on the part of Ghanaians has accounted for low tax payment, because most people did not understand why they should pay tax, adding that “as you read you acquire more knowledge and know that it is our civic duty to pay taxes.”

Mr. Alex Boateng Amane, a member of the Presby Church, in appreciating the need to register for the PIN, also wondered why people in his Mataheko community lived in deplorable conditions and were still expected to pay tax.

He said “the roads we will ply to pay the taxes are not good, so if they demand taxes they should think about us.”

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Ms. Badu said the payment of taxes was a civic duty because the constitution which was the mother law of the land had placed a demand on citizens to do so.

She added that, “Tax payment was not an imposition but a responsibility that comes with the enjoyment of rights.”

She said therein could the citizenry demand accountability from the government because the same constitution that established this law also mandated the government to take care of its citizens.

As has been determined by the current government, enforcement of the acquisition of a PIN before one could transact certain businesses in Ghana would commence from the first of April, 2018.

Some of the activities one would need a PIN to transact include opening a bank accounts, acquiring a driver’s license, clearing goods from the harbour and acquiring a passport.