When a few years ago the government sets forth the idea of mandatory funded pension, the youth working in the IT industry were the first to come out against it. Why just did they? Because the majority of enterprises is working with the foreign capital and high business culture, where is out of the “black horseshoe” and where the whole salary is “white”. And if the IT specialist received let’s say 1 million drams “white” wages, a legally taxable salary, he naturally will be excited when in addition to tax, 25 thousand drams is also taxed.
Receiving one million drams salary is not a crime, nor a luxury, and if a person pays the income tax required by law, he can walk with his head high and look in the eyes of his fellow citizens without shame. The more are such people, the better for the state. But the government has decided to punish these employees and their employers for honesty, and at best, push them to shadow, and in the worst case, leave only sloppy, uncivilized and purely shadow businesses in the scene of action. This is the logic of the proposed new Tax Code. Punishing honest and diligent taxpayers and encouraging those who conceal the revenues, in other words, from pensioners, teachers, doctors and army, for some reason, is called a “social justice” and “support to middle class.”
Actually, it is a direct path on the way of making the middle class a poor class. If a person receives one, or even two or three million drams per month and pays taxes, he anyway will still be a middle class. Yes, he will not be ashamed to come home from work, the family will be fed and dressed, but nevertheless he will not be able to allow some “excess” to himself. While the “upper class” are a few dozens of families in Armenia who receive hundreds of thousands of dollars income per month but pay as much tax as the representatives of the middle and poor class. If the government truly wants to improve the material conditions of people receiving up to 200 thousand salaries, then it should try not to take away money from honest taxpayers but to organize a normal and legitimate taxation from the aforementioned few dozens of families and everything will fall into its place. Or, is it to the advantage of some people for all the businesses to be involved in “black” or “gray” schemes? Is it more controllable this way?
… In 1917, during the Bolshevik coup, the Decembrist’s noble grandson asks his son, what do the Bolsheviks organizing riots in the streets want? “They want to see no rich in our country,” – replied the son. “It’s strange, – wonders the noble, – while my grandfather wanted to see no more poor.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
