The most boring occupation in Armenia is probably reading governmental documents and statements. Last week I did that twice. First, I read the RA law on income tax. Second, I read the list of companies that paid over 3 million AMD worth in taxes in 2005. The list was published by “Republic of Armenia” newspaper without being approved and signed. Based on this fact and the long title of the list we may assume that this process was controlled by a powerful body, thus the initiator is not the taxation body for sure. As a rule, this body prepares the taxation code. Almost all employees of the taxation body are experts in economics. They should have read somewhere in their books that tax agents are free of paying income taxes. According to the third subtext of the RA taxation code, “resident and non-resident natural persons are to pay income taxes”. During the five years since its adoption, the mentioned law has been amended 17 times. The mentioned provision of the code has not been amended so far in spite of the fact that economical books say that persons are to pay income taxes. Accordingly, the clauses in the mentioned list are either something new in liberal economy or the return to the socialism policy. If I am not mistaken, during the period of socialism the government used to take income tax from collective farms as well (besides natural persons that were considered the work force).
In Western countries governments usually publish lists of companies that paid large income taxes. About ten years ago the Turkish list of the biggest income tax payers was headed by an Armenian woman. Armenians all over the world were disappointed to learn about that fact because the mentioned woman was an owner of parlor houses. This is probably the reason why our government thinks it’s better to publish names of companies instead of names of people. Accordingly, our society will not be given necessary information to know the names of the businessmen who have paid attention to the announcements of governmental officials who want to reduce corruption in the country. According to that official information, there are 830 companies in Armenia that paid income taxes exceeding 3 million. We can say that this is either a list of companies that pay higher salaries to their employees or have many employees. The first places are given to the same companies that are leading the list of the biggest 300 tax-payer companies of Armenia. However, in the second list there is much difference between the companies. The first place is given to the electric networks of Armenia. The sum that the employees of this company paid to the budget as income tax covers 1.077 million dram. The second company is Armentel (700 million) and the third company is copper-molybdenum company of Zangezur (512 million). The list of companies that paid less than 100 million dram starts from the 35th place. As for companies that paid less than 10 million dram of income tax, their listing starts from the 307th place. The first one among these companies is Jermuk Group (9,9 million). The last places starting from the 636th place are given to companies that paid less than 4 million of income tax. After the first attempts, the publication of the lists of 300 biggest tax payers have led to positive results. Mass Media often analyze the places of businesses in that list. Since the publication of that list, businessmen got encouraged and started paying more money to the budget. But this case is different. In fact, natural persons, which are called tax agents in the taxation legislation, don’t have anything to do with income tax. The only thing they do is just collect those taxes like agents from physical persons and pay that money to the budget. The information about the energy networks company of Armenia being in the first place and has paid 359 times more money than the union of water users of Vagharshapat city doesn’t mean anything. The latter is the last company in the mentioned list that paid income tax over 3 million dram. The only thing we understand when reading this information is the fact that it is absurd to read governmental documents. Even the documents that are legal. It is nonsense to listen to the explanations of officials too. If you don’t take my word for it, then listen to what head of the Central Bank of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan has to say about the influence that the Armenian dram rate increase has on Armenian economy.