The revenues of the RA 2024 state budget will be 2 trillion 676 billion AMD, of which the income from tax revenues and state duties will be around 2 trillion 566 billion AMD. In 2024, the RA Government will maintain the pace of tax administration improvement, as well as implement tax legislation reforms, as a result of which it is expected to provide an improvement in the tax/GDP ratio by around 0.75 percentage. This was stated by the Chairman of the RA State Revenue Committee (SRC) Rustam Badasyan during the preliminary debate of the draft law on the RA State Budget for 2024 at the joint sitting of the NA Standing Committees on Economic Affairs and on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs on October 31.
According to the SRC Chairman, the electronic systems will be improved in order to introduce digitalized systems with innovative IT solutions and increase the level of reliability of the SRC information base.
37 billion 369.4 million AMD is planned to be allocated in the 2024 draft of the RA state budget for the tax and customs services programme, including the costs of maintaining the administration apparatus, as well as credit funds – about 2 billion 365 million AMD, grant funds – 1 billion 589.9 million AMD, the RA co-financing: a total of 850.9 million AMD.
The aim of the project is the implementation of the unified tax and customs of the Republic of Armenia. The final result of the project is the implementation of effective tax and customs control and the provision of state budget revenues.
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The speaker answered the various questions of the deputies, which were related to the existing problems of the sector, the budget programmes, etc.
The Chair of the NA Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs Gevorg Papoyan inquired whether the SRC building in Khorenatsi Street will be handed over to the State Property Cadastre Committee and moved to the former building of the Ministry of Defense on Ashtarak Highway.
In response, Rustam Badasyan referred to the establishment of the foreign economic activity centre in Yerevan and noted that it is one of the most important trade reforms for business. “And it gave us an opportunity to move our administrative building. In 2024, an expenditure of 1.5 billion AMD is planned in order to make this capital expenditure. In other words, we will hand over the Khorenatsi building to the state property at some stage, and the SRC will move to Ashtarak Highway. It is designed to be implemented within 3 years”, the SRC Chairman said.
The deputy of the Civil Contract Faction Hovik Aghazaryan inquired about the negative phenomena in the field of micro-business, stating that large companies often open a small business, buy goods from there and thus reduce the tax base.
According to Rustam Badasyan, the mentioned cases of abuse have not disappeared.
“As long as we have special systems, we will always have cases of abuse. But as a result of the legislative amendment of the Ministry of Finance, from July 1, the income tax rate should have been common in the micro field. And according to the results of July, in August we noticed that about 2.000 jobs were ‘lost’ in the micro field. That is, 2.000 workers did not start working at the general rate and paying taxes, but they were simply dismissed, or they show that they were,” the SRC Chairman mentioned.
Rustam Badasyan informed that they immediately started administration to find those 2000 jobs. And globally, according to him, as long as the microsystem exists, there will be abuses.
National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia