NGO Head: The reduction in the threshold of a non-taxable annual turnover is aimed at eradicating corruption and reducing the shadow

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.