Even though people in Armenia do not believe in statistics, the official statistics is periodically published and made available to the society. Even if people do not care about the macroeconomic information, the list of the largest taxpayers is accepted otherwise.
People are interested in the list of the largest taxpayers mainly due to the facts that it allows to learn about the wealth of the richest people of the country and gives a place to new competition rivals between oligarchs. It is like a competition when the companies of different oligarchs go up in the list and are praised for paying more taxes.
The state income committee recently published the list of the largest 1000 taxpayers. Of course there are no surprises in the list but there are things that are interesting to think about.
First, let’s start from the fact that the largest taxpayer in 2010 is again the ArmRusGazArd company. In 2010 this company paid less tax than in 2009 but still is in the first place. In addition, the second largest taxpayer, Samvel Alexanyan’s Alex Grig company has narrowed the tax payments too. The company paid 15.9 billion drams to the budget in 2010, while they paid 16.1 billion in 2009 which was a crisis year. In consideration of the fact that this MP has other companies as well which are in the list of the largest taxpayers (such as the Natalie Pharm and Lus Astgh Sugar companies), we may assume that this businessman is the largest taxpayer of Armenia.
Now let’s discuss the microeconomic information. Last year these 1000 taxpayers all together paid 432.8 billion drams to the budget, which is the 73% of the entire tax incomes. The tax payments of the largest taxpayers have grown by 12.8% compared to last year. The overall tax incomes into the budget grew by 13.7% in 2011 compared to the previous year. It means that the tax growth load was mostly difficult for the small and medium businesses. This fact becomes more evident after having a look at the largest taxpayers’ list and the first 15 places in that list (see below).
The tax payments on part of these companies have grown only by 10.6% compared to the previous year.
The proportion of direct and indirect taxes is interesting to observe too. As it is mentioned in the chart, 7 companies out of the 15 biggest ones have reduced the indirect tax payments even compared to the crisis year. For example, even though Armentel and Flash companies paid more taxes, in fact it was observed due to the growth of indirect taxes (VAT, excise tax). It means that this load is put on the shoulders of consumers. From this point of view Karabakh Telecom company (Viva Cell) is the pioneer as it paid 1.8 billion AMD indirect tax in 2010 while in the crisis year it paid 7.3 billion. The first company that had the biggest jump in the indirect tax payments is the Alex Grig company. In 2009 this company paid 46 million AMD direct tax to the budget (0.3% of its entire tax capacity), in 2010 the capacity of direct taxes reached 650 million (4.1%). Especially the companies involved in import of petroleum paid less direct tax. Armenia International Airports company paid approximately the 60% of its tax payments as direct taxes. Even though the entire capacity of tax payments has grown, the capacity of direct taxes has been cut down. Accordingly, in 2009 the budget collected 91.9 billion AMD direct tax, and in 2010 – 91 billion. In other words, the growth of the entire tax collection capacity does not give any reasons to be happy.