During the discussion of the Draft on Amendments to the Tax Code at the initiative of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs of the National Assembly, Hakob Avagyan, adviser to the President of the “Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Cooperation Association” NGO, member of the the Governing Board of the CSO Anti-Corruption Coalition, said that the question whether or not to introduce a system of universal declaration of income of individuals is a very important issue.

“Let’s imagine that this system is implemented right now, when making a choice, a migrant worker coming from Russia would take into account that he has to declare his finances here, whether to go to Armenia or, for example, Kazakhstan? I don’t want to offend anyone, but the Armenian system turns people into “squirrels in a wheel”, who must constantly spend the  earned money and justify, so that they don’t have any income left to be taxed in the future,” he said.

Let’s remind that the draft proposes to introduce a system of universal declaration of incomes of all citizens of the RA who are residents of the Republic of Armenia, which means that a declaration must also be submitted by:

• all citizens of the Republic of Armenia who are residents of the Republic of Armenia who have not receive income during the reporting year or who received income that is deductible in terms of taxation of the income tax,
• all citizens of the Republic of Armenia who are residents of the Republic of Armenia and received income only from tax agents during the reporting year.

At the same time, it is anticipated that the information at the disposal of the tax authority should be automatically filled in the declaration, for example, the information about the income calculated by the tax agent and the taxes paid. The declaration must be submitted by 20 April of the tax year following each reporting period.

The draft proposes to implement the declaration system in three stages: in 2023, 2024 and 2025, according to groups of declarants.

Details in the video.