On February 11, in Tsakhkadzor the seminar-discussion for economic journalists continued with the participation of the RA Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan. The representatives from the Ministry of Finance presented the reports on “The Summary Comparison of the RA Tax Code” and “The RA Tax System, Presentation of the Amendments to the Tax Code”. The main objective of the presentation of Tax Code amendments was to inform the representatives of mass media about the regulations of the RA Tax Code before January 1, 2018, and after January 1, 2018. According to Davit Ananyan, RA Deputy Minister of Finance, while developing tax legislation, the long-term growth of the economy was taken into consideration. “Currently we cannot concentrate on short-term results. Till now, the economic policy of Armenia was not implemented with this logic. The amendments to the Tax Code resulted in short-term solutions which had subjective and objective reasons”, - underlined Davit Ananyan stressing the long-term and shot-term stability of the state budget as a basis for the logic of amendments to the Tax Code.
Finance Minister Vardan Aramyan noted that according to the viewpoint of world experts in the field, where there is income, it should be taxed, even of a small amount. “We tried at least not to increase the given tax privileges, some of them were eliminated”, - said the Minister and specified that in some areas the privileges had been maintained because of the lack of necessary toolset, and in the coming years, assessing potential impacts, it would be possible to make the right decision. According to the specialists of the Ministry of Finance, the following basic principles were laid down in the development of the RA Tax Code: to highlight the long-term growth of the economy, both short-term and long-term stability of the state budget; to basically maintain the existing tax privileges; to narrow the scope of application of alternative taxation systems to form a more fair tax system; to tighten up on requirements and control over transactions and documentation of separate products; to gradually improve tax administration to keep tax discipline at a high level, etc.
Summing up the amendments, the specialists of the sphere also answered the questions of media representatives and emphasized that these changes in the tax legislation are aimed at creating favourable conditions for the business environment and promoting its development.
According to the RA Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan, they have succeeded in implementing the plan for 2017.
“In 2017, we have set ourselves a task to go to fiscal consolidation, to demonstrate a certain conservative policy in terms of expenditures in order to be able to slow down the rate of debt/GDP growth”, - noted the Minister.
