ArmInfo. The State Revenue Committee of Armenia (SRC) initiates the process of liberalization of tax legislation in terms of applying measures of responsibility for offenses. Head of the Legal Department of the SRC of Armenia Arman Mnatsakanyan stated this on 26 October, presenting reforms to the journalists in the field of legal regulation of tax relations, as well as forthcoming initiatives to simplify tax administration.
In particular, as Mnatsakanyan pointed out, the legislator earlier imposed penalties in the amount of 10-20 thousand AMD for late payment of taxes from the official as from the physical. "Very often, in the presence of tax debt, even in the amount of AMD 1 thousand, the imposition of a monetary penalty was foreseen, which aroused dissatisfaction of business," he explained. Simultaneously, as recalled, the representative of the SRC, according to Art. 23 of the RA Law "On Taxes", in the event of delay in payment of tax for each overdue day, a fine of 0.15 percent of the amount of tax not paid in a timely manner shall be collected. Meeting the leaders and entrepreneurs, as well as under the instruction of the Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, the Committee was pleased with the decision to simplify the tax administration and liberalize the tax legislation. As a result, using the principle of proportionality of legal responsibility to the offense, it was decided to apply administrative responsibility only in case of excess of tax debt 200 thousand drams. The State Revenue Committee also plans to submit for approval to the government a package of legislative amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) concerning the most common administrative offenses of the taxation sphere - cases of failure to submit or untimely submission of required reporting documents to the tax authority. Such offenses, as noted by Mnatsakanyan, now attract penalties - in the amount of 10-20 thousand AMD. The minimum and maximum penalties in the law are not established and are left to the discretion of the authorized body, he said. "If the government and the parliament approve the document, the penalties for the specified tax offense, committed for the first time, will be replaced with a warning." In case of a relapse within one year, the legislator will fix a specific amount of penalties, without giving it to the discretion of the authorized person " Management. The tax and customs body announces yet another innovation and it concerns the recovery of tax payments out of court. For today, as Mnatsakanyan noted, very often taxpayers do not fulfill their tax obligations within the established period, as a result, the tax body takes certain actions to collect unperformed tax liabilities in a compulsory manner. The process provides for various procedures, which, first of all, are related to the problem of properly notifying the taxpayer. This, according to the representative of the department, unscrupulous taxpayers are very skillfully avoiding, which confounds the whole process. The new legislative initiative entitles the tax authority, in the presence of undisputed tax liabilities, to carry out the prescribed actions without this notification, on the basis that the economic entity is, by default, informed of this. This innovation also implies automatic collection of money from the debtor's accounts.