ArmInfo. Not later than September 2018, the Armenian financial authorities will present a package of tax changes to the public court. The head of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia David Ananyan stated July 13 at a press conference.
According to him, the country's authorities are obliged to revise the Tax Code in order not to pressure tax administration and from the point of view of the right not to create problems for economic entities. In particular, Ananyan said, it is planned to reduce the taxation of capital and incomes, and to increase taxes on consumption. These measures, according to the head of the SRC, will "breathe" the economy of the country.
As David Ananyan pointed out, if the Armenian government has a clear vision of development and the belief that this way is true, international partners will in no way interfere with the planned reforms. "Today we are obliged to adjust the tax system in such a way that the economy is not in captivity of tax legislation," he said. Earlier, Deputy Minister of Finance of Armenia Arman Poghosyan, speaking about expected tax reforms, said that when examining international tax policy trends it becomes obvious that the world is moving towards reducing the tax burden on direct taxes (income tax, personal income, in part property tax). Instead, the rates of indirect taxes or consumption taxes are raised (VAT, excise tax). This policy, he said, is aimed at ensuring economic activity, stimulating investment.
According to him, having decided to reduce the income tax rate, Armenia, in order not to widen the gap between expenditures and budget revenues, it will be necessary to increase the tax burden for certain types of taxes, in particular, on VAT and excise tax. Perhaps, the list of excisable goods will be expanded. One of the possible scenarios is also an increase in the VAT rate from 20% to 21%. This will provide the state treasury with an additional 20.3 billion drams. Here, of course, not everything is so unambiguous, since, by increasing VAT, Armenia, perhaps, will restrain consumption, which will lead not to additional incomes, but on the contrary - to budget losses. The next possible option for compensating tax losses of the budget, as he pointed out, is the introduction of a progressive scale of real estate taxation, since it is considered that the tax base of the sphere is currently undervalued, and expensive real estate is not charged with a proportional tax.