In the year preceding the increase in customs clearance rates under Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) regulations, nearly 190,000 cars were imported into Armenia, for which importers paid 95 billion drams in taxes. Last year, compared to 2018, the number of imported cars was approximately three times higher.
Overall, in 2019, more than one and a half trillion drams in taxes were paid in Armenia, of which about 43 billion drams were returned by the State Revenue Committee (SRC) as debit, “old debts.”
Compared to 2018, the increase in collected taxes, according to SRC Chairman David Ananyan, is more than 20 percent: “Our goal is not to meet the programmatic targets, but to provide a comparison with real life, relative to the programmatic targets. In other words, we simply help taxpayers so that they declare their tax income in full.”
According to Ananyan, the amounts to be collected in 2020, in their estimation, will be much higher than what is envisaged by the state budget.
He recalled that even before the revolution, Prime Minister Pashinyan had declared that there was a possibility of increasing budget revenues by 30-40 percent: “Let us record that as a result of the actual activity of 2018 and 2019, together with our taxpayers, we were able to collect enough taxes to constitute a 44 percent increase over the actual figure of 2017.”
During the holiday period in Armenia, compared to the same period last year, 32 percent more cash register machine (CRM) receipts were printed: “Approximately 10.5 million CRM receipts were issued, instead of, if I am not mistaken, 7-something million last year. Turnover increased by about 22 percent.”
Ananyan assured that citizens are showing interest in the matter of paying taxes. He said that people for years had not thought that this was their legal obligation: “There are already people who are interested in fulfilling their constitutional obligations, and that is what we are here for. Our function is that, by providing services to the public, we show the right path.”
