Universal Income Declaration: what happened has little in common with  what was intended - David Ananyan

ArmInfo. By implementing universal income declaration, the Armenian authorities are addressing  several problems - they streamline the work of law enforcement officers and provide the government with complete oversight of citizens' cash flows, as stated by David Ananyan, PhD in Economics, Director of DSA and former head of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia, in an interview with an ArmInfo correspondent.

According to Ananyan, who promoted the idea of the Universal  Declaration of Income when he was Deputy Minister of Finance and then  Chairman of the State Revenue Committee, the system was initially  supposed to focus on declaring income and taxes paid by us.  Meanwhile, the authorities have also "enriched" the system to include  monitoring citizens' cash flows. he  says.

Meanwhile, the purpose of the universal income declaration system was  to enforce the principle of self- declaration adopted 30 years ago.  Back then, the financial authorities had set up a similar legal  requirement for all income paid by non-tax agents, starting from  April 1, 1994. According to this rule, this group of citizens had to  submit a declaration by March 1 (inclusive) of the year following the  reporting year.  The concept of universal income declaration was  already a step ahead assuming that all citizens would submit a  declaration, including income already taxed by a tax agent.

< The establishment of this institution could have had a systemic  importance and could have cultivated a culture of paying taxes among  citizens. This concept was once the basis of the system,>  the  economist noted.  Meanwhile, the current government's goal is to  establish a hybrid system that will, on one hand,  provide certain  tax revenues, and on the other hand, more importantly, compel  individuals  to disclose their own cash flows. This will subsequently  aid the work of the relevant state structures in combating corruption  and confiscating property of illegal origin. The picture becomes more  complete when considering that last year, authorities also made some  concessions regarding  bank secrecy protection (in particular, the  tax authority, can now request a taxpayer's banking transactions  without needing a court decision - Ed.). All of these factors  must  be considered within a broader context, the former head of the State  Revenue Committee noted.