Recently, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Caucasus Research Resource Center published a report on “Taxpayers’ Perception Survey”. According to the survey, 58% of responded businesses and taxpayers do not trust the President of Armenia. The majority of respondents do not also trust the government and the National Assembly. In the conversation with Aravot.am, the Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Financial-Credit, Budgetary, and Economic Affairs, Gagik Minasyan, said the following about this report and, in particular, mistrust of the businesses in the 3 most important institutions of the country, “It is difficult to say to what extent the original question has been adequate to the answer because it is always possible to ask questions to get this or that answer.” As said by Mr. Minasyan, the government should pursue the goal to have a greater number of citizens, including the businesses, believe the reforms implemented by the government. “And not only believe, but also support, because in that case it is possible to achieve results. On the other hand, we must recognize that not all reforms are understandable and acceptable to everyone from the beginning.
This will take some time.” In the USAID report, a part of responded businesses expressed an opinion that the government first uses the money generated from the tax for personal purposes, then for the army, and only after these two, for the pensions. In this regard, the ruling party representative said Armenia is one of the first countries to pass to 100% transparency of the budget. “These countries are very little to find, there is no such thing in any of the post-Soviet states. Since 2013, we are purchasing everything, starting from pencil and pen, from the state budget, we made is available to the public in electronic form. I have difficulty in saying what they mean by saying for personal purposes.” In the “Taxpayers’ Perception Survey” report, the majority of surveyed small and medium enterprises estimated the tax load in Armenia as “very heavy” and “heavy”. Similar opinion was expressed by 19% of businesses. To the question of Aravot.am of why the small and large businesses in Armenia are complaining about the heavy tax load, which unlike the small business they do not have even significant benefits, Mr. Minasyan said that the privileges granted to SME will always exist. With regard to tax load, the NA representative illustrated an example of supporting the business, which, however, according to the MP, gives rise to concern.
“We want 3.5% turnover tax for SME go down to 1%, and we claim the small and medium-sized enterprises to operate absolutely transparent. In this case, a revolt rises by SME, they point out that even under this case they cannot act with absolute transparency. They say, no matter how much lower you go, we cannot act transparently. This suggests that the threshold that allows them to be considered an SME, they are exceeding this threshold. For example, for less than 58 million turnover volume, there will be unlimited privileges, only show your turnover completely and documented. And they are saying, no matter how much lower you go, we will not show a complete turnover. In other words, the threshold of 58 million is violated, the 58 million showed by them is not 58 million. They should at least explain to us what the problem is that they do not want to show.”
Nelly BABAYAN
