ArmInfo. The reduction of the threshold of the non-taxable annual turnover from 115 million drams ($ 238,000) to 58.35 million AMD ($ 120,000) is aimed at eradicating corruption and reducing the shadow economy. Answering the question of ArmInfo, the chairman of the Union of Employers of Armenia Gagik Makaryan stated this.
According to Makaryan, in order to ease the tax burden for small businesses, differentiated taxation models were developed earlier in Armenia. However, despite the good intentions of the legislator, the initiative served as an evil service, creating a temptation for various manipulations. "In Armenia, the ideal culture for conducting business and the work of control bodies has not yet been formed, and corruption risks and shadow manipulations retain their positions in the system," Makaryan said. In addition, in other countries, the expert said, there is no such practice, since there is a single tax scale and all are equal.
At present, as the head of the Union noted, the tax authorities try to revise the thresholds to return risky taxpayers to the tax field or make them more visible to the State Revenue Committee to fight corruption. Some of the fruits of the department's principal work, as the expert believes, are already visible. "Tax and customs structures are acting from the position of common sense today - unbiased and without emotions, which is already judging by the volume of tax revenues of the state treasury," Gagik Makaryan said.