Ministry of Finance in March 2018 will issue a package of next amendments to Tax Code of Armenia

ArmInfo. In March 2018, the  Armenian government, in the person of the Ministry of Finance,  initiates further amendments to the Tax Code of the country. The  amendments, Deputy Finance Minister David Ananyan explained to  ArmInfo correspondent, mainly concern the revision of the approaches  to calculating tax liabilities in the framework of the joint activity  agreement, determining the cost of acquisitions within concession  agreements, as well as a number of articles in the bankruptcy  procedure.

In particular, according to Ananyan, the current taxation procedures  under the joint activity agreement are "not very good". It is for  this reason, as Ananyan pointed out, referring to the statistics,  during the last 5 years such a treaty is not concluded. According to  the Finance Ministry, the tax legislation, both old and new, did not  provide reasonable regulation for the participants in the process.  For today, the ministry specifies taxation systems for the  participants of the process. So, the current legislation provides for  the implementation of all tax liabilities formed on the basis of  joint activities of one of the parties to the contract, and only then  provides for the redistribution of profits. The Ministry of Finance  insists on the implementation of tax obligations by each of the  parties to the contract and the redistribution of all revenues.

In terms of determining the value of acquisitions under concession  agreements, the Ministry of Finance proposes a review of the  procedure for calculating VAT. In the event that the exploiter of  concession assets creates a new asset and transfers it to the state,  then this transaction is exempt from VAT. At the same time,  acquisitions within the framework of a transaction are eligible for  tax assessment. Suppose, if the concessionaire builds a new water  channel that will continue to be exploited, according to the  procedure, purely formally, it must be returned to the state, since  all infrastructure remains state property, and only then it gets the  right to use. At this stage, the Ministry of Finance proposes to  release the transfer of a new water channel to the state from VAT. At  the same time, the financial department grants the exploiter the  right to calculate VAT from payments to the builder or pipe supplier.

The next rule concerns reforms in bankruptcy procedures. Often,  according to the Ministry of Finance, it is the excessive tax burden  in the process of financial recovery that puts an end to the  sanitation of the enterprise. The ministry is going to reconsider the  legislative regulation of the sphere in order to understand what  obligations business is burdened with in the process of bankruptcy.  In general, the agency plans to find flexible mechanisms for the  recovery of companies in bankruptcy, at the same time, excluding  cases of artificial bankruptcies. For this, changes will be made in  legal acts regulating the procedures of the insolvency institution  outside the framework of the Tax Code. In addition, issues related to  the payment and calculation of VAT on alienation of the subject of  pledge will be reviewed.

Earlier, ArmInfo informed that on the basis of impulses coming from  the public in September-October 2017, the Armenian government  initiated the process of revising the Tax Code adopted earlier a year  earlier in order to polish the tax legislation. As part of the  initiative, 242 legal acts and about 113 articles were revised for  three main groups: in 33 of them there are changes in the content of  the rule of law, 80 changes in terminology, as well as other changes  - technical and concretizing. The main ones were changes in the  taxation of dividends, overpayments accumulated under the minimum  income tax, the taxation of the public catering sector, revised tax  incentives for the purchase of housing on mortgages. The government  also freed the sphere of inbound tourism from VAT in the next 3 years  and changed the order of taxation of diesel fuel.

The Tax Code of Armenia was criticized by the country's expert and  entrepreneurial community, since, in their view, the document is  conceptually directed not at development, but at satisfying the  state's fiscal tasks.