Chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, a consultative meeting was held in the Office of Government to discuss the introduction of a nationwide system for declaring personal income in the Republic of Armenia. The discussion was attended by heads of relevant government departments and representatives of relevant National Assembly commissions.
Addressing the attendees, Prime Minister Pashinyan noted: “Dear colleagues, we have gathered to discuss our agenda and the schedule for introducing a system for declaring personal income in Armenia. A number of important legislative initiatives are being implemented that will lead to significant changes in our tax system and the system of income declaration, in general.
Taking the opportunity, I would like to state the objectives behind this decision. In fact, these changes are being implemented to increase the potential of our state, the Republic of Armenia, considering that relations between citizens and the state will be drastically improved under the new system. I want to once again emphasize that our perception and understanding of the state budget of the Republic of Armenia will be changed.
In fact, the state budget of the Republic of Armenia is the gross sum, the national pocket, where money is being accumulated and spent. And when various economic, social, infrastructural issues are raised in an understandable and fair manner on different occasions, we should all state that the time, speed, and quality of the resolution of those issues depend on the potential of our republic and state, the relations between the citizens and government, and the transparency of the government and citizens.
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We know that for many years the citizens of the Republic of Armenia have rightly demanded and continue to demand transparency from the Armenian government. I think that our government works very transparently – more transparently than any other government in Armenia – but we will continue to move forward in this process of transparency.
On the other hand, I think that, in the end, transparency should become a national mindset, because after all, no government member is born in that status. They are citizens, and the adoption of transparency rules in civilian life should promote it regardless of what status we have or what status we will have in the future.
Therefore, I think it crucial for us to have the political will to consistently implement these changes. Currently, there are two fundamental changes: one of them is the new system of property taxation that we have proposed, and the other is the introduction of a system of nationwide personal income declaration.
The importance and necessity of this system, we were convinced in the context of the implementation of our anti-crisis programs, when we encountered a situation in which it is sometimes impossible to understand, after all, who are vulnerable and who are socially protected, who really need state assistance in the amount of 60 thousand or 100 thousand drams, and who do not. And we faced a situation when people who obviously did not need assistance received it, and people who needed our backing did not get it.
And we stated that if we had developed a common mechanism for declaring income, in fact, we would not have suffered so much, and we would have known the list of our needy citizens after only 1-2 computer operations.
We would have this list with first names, phone numbers, addresses, which would facilitate the provision of assistance, because we spent weeks identifying those people whom we had to give the money. This, in turn, led to additional complications, especially since, as I already said, we are not sure that we found exactly those people whom we had to find, in some cases we did not find those people whom it would be desirable to find.
So, the time has really come to introduce a system for declaring personal income in the Republic of Armenia. We need a very serious political will to carry out such reforms, and we have this political will.”
Then a general description of the system for declaring personal income in Armenia was presented. The goals of introducing the concept, the proposed schedule, the methodology of accountability and control, as well as fiscal impact were discussed.
An interested exchange of opinions took place, during which mechanisms of organization of the process of declaring income of individuals, necessary legislative instruments, peculiarities of declaration of different groups of beneficiaries, formation of a culture of submitting individual declarations, assessment of impact of the general declaration and other issues were discussed.
A number of suggestions and recommendations were voiced. The Prime Minister once again noted that the introduction of a general system of income declarations is a state-oriented mentality and a reform aimed at creating adequate public behavior.
Nikol Pashinyan instructed the heads of the responsible departments to continue joint discussions, to work intensively with colleagues from the parliament in order to develop mutually agreed approaches to the effective implementation and functioning of the system.
INFORMATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT OF THE OFFICE OF THE PRIME-MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
