BY  SIMON  EBEGBULEM

BENIN—THE acting Chairman of Joint Task Board, JTB, Alhaji Kabir Mashi, has urged state governments to embrace the Tax Payers Identification Number, TIN, currently in operation in the country, to boost the socio-economic development of their respective states.

Masha, in Benin City, Edo State at a one-day stakeholders’ sensitisation workshop on TIN, organised by the Edo State Board of Internal Revenue in collaboration with the Joint Tax Board, commended Edo State Government for the positive steps taken so far in sensitising its people on the benefits of TIN.

He said that the country’s economy and businesses would improve in the states if the TIN was embraced.

Mashi, represented by the Programme Manager, TIN, Oduba Oduba, cited the uniqueness, reliability and centralised nature of tax information as some  of the reasons for the introduction of TIN, adding:   “The TIN enables you to do all your tax business  from anywhere in the country. We are already making progress in Edo State because the state remains the first to have ordered for additional biometric data equipments.”

Executive Chairman of the Edo State Internal Revenue Service, Chief Oseni Elamah, said TIN was put in place for the purpose of unifying all eligible tax payers in the country, adding that with the introduction of TIN, all obstacles, particularly multiple taxation, which posed challenges to the growth in the tax administration would be removed to set the tax system on the path of accelerated transformation.