Iranian businessmen express dissatisfaction with the customs duties in Armenia

ArmInfo. The agreement between the governments of Armenia and Iran on the exclusion of double taxation for businessmen of the two countries, signed in April 2017, received legal force, but does not operate in full. This was stated on October 23 by the head of the Iranian tax service, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economics Tahaahi Nezhat in Yerevan at a meeting with the chairman of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia. He said that some Iranian businessmen express their dissatisfaction.

The Iranian official suggested that the Armenian counterpart create a working group to identify and eliminate existing problems. The reaction did not take long. The head of the Committee Vardan Harutyunyan gave an oral instruction appointing the head and members of the group. Harutyunyan promised to be more careful in explaining the rights to entrepreneurs from Iran. "We need to be as transparent as possible and support our Iranian businessmen, and I must ask and offer Mr. Najat, so that our Armenian businessmen are supported by our Iranian colleagues. Our laws differ, and Iranian businessmen face frequent problems that can be resolved very quickly, if they have the opportunity to work closely with the tax authorities," said Harutyunyan. He proposed, for close cooperation, to exchange the data of the electronic databases of the two countries, with which the Iranian side agreed.

Since 1998, an agreement has been signed between Armenia and Iran on the exclusion of double taxation on income and property. Armenia has similar agreements with 47 countries, the last agreement was recently signed with Israel. The purpose of these agreements is to eliminate double taxation in foreign trade between two states, to avoid tax discrimination with respect to economic entities of the parties, to exclude double taxation on property and income, and to create a predictable and stable tax environment for business.

For the first half-year Armenia's trade with Iran amounted to $ 114.4mln with an annual growth of 0.4%. At the same time, exports amounted to $ 34.7 million, a decline of 9.3%, imports - $ 79.7 million, with growth of 5.3%.