The Legal Week issue no. 41 referred to the delay of implementation of the controversial provisions of law on Turnover tax. Mr. Sedrak Asatryan, Managing Partner of “Concern-Dialog” law firm, introduced a number of specificities related to this issue:

“I believe there are no other options since extra-small enterprises manifested that they will no longer stay on the market. This meanswe will have massive business exits or – particularly in regards to the integration to the EEU – businesses will try to relocating outside Armenia. The taxes paid by SMEs comprise 2% of the overall state budget. Damaging the country’s sustainability by targeting SMEs for these 2% at the expense of discovering shadow economic activities of large business is definitely not effective.

Ultimately, the topic of this talk, the evasion of turnover tax (the ill-fated Article 205 of Criminal Code of RA) is nowadays can be found everywhere: at manufacturing sites, at major supermarkets, agricultural products processing factories, etc. In this type of enterprises employees are often not officially registered, the income tax is not paid regularly relevant documents are intentionally falsified, etc.”

“I believe that namely the aforementioned types of enterprises should be checked out as sources for filling up the state budget,” _ summarized Sedrak Asatryan.

Video @ © Legal Week #41