As you know, the government started the year with the lofty speeches of fighting against monopolies and oligopolies. Of course the majority of Armenian citizens were listening to these promises with lenient smiles by knowing for sure that such a thing is not going to happen in the near future. But few people would think that at the beginning of the year the government would submit to the NA a new bill on tax revision, which completely contradicts the vision of fight against monopolies and oligopolies. Yes, we mean the definition of new tax types for communities. Maybe someone may ask a question what all this has got to do with the abovementioned objective of the government. It has a very direct connection. The thing is that monopolies have various expressions. And one of these expressions is that monopolies may be local (domestic). For example, the only dentist, who works in a remote village, is a monopolist in the village because he can define any price for his service. The small kiosk selling goods in the village may also be a monopolist or the only farmer, who has a tractor because their services don’t have any alternatives in the vicinity. Now let us return to the recommended tax amendments. Together with other tax types, this tax revision implies the application of special taxes for uncultivated farming lands. It means that if the person has some price of land and doesn’t cultivate it because of material or other type of reasons he/she will have to pay taxes for that. Indeed this will finally bring him to the point when he’ll have to get rid of this piece of land and sell it to someone else. And as we know in our country this someone else cannot be an accidental person. Moreover, in the end it turns out that this someone else ends up purchases all the nearby lands and thus becomes the only monopolist in the region. And from then on he will be the one to determine the conditions, in which the farmers will work. Our national deputies have given anther name to this – redistribution of the capital. The former minister of industry Karen Tchshmarityan responded that there is nothing wrong with the redistribution of the capital. This is a stimulus of development. Indeed the key role of the former minister is quite perceptible now with his visions on the redistribution of the capital, due to which now have neither industry nor a ministry with an analogous name. Even the coalition MPs were spoke against the bill, by saying that the heads of communities may use the granted powers to pressure on farmers, who they don’t like. And the major issue is here. This means that the mechanisms applied in normal countries are immediately marred in our country by becoming a certain tool to attain certain goals. Moreover, even the representatives of government indirectly confess this. The surprising thing is that after all some people have hopes that the population will believe in the promises of the government and the purity of goals. In the meantime, we always believe that any initiative of the government is aimed at squeezing whatever is possible from the people and fill the budget (and their own pockets from the side). If in normal countries the priority is given to the actual growth of the economy (both qualitatively and quantitatively) then in our country the priority is given to merely filling the budget and collecting money. They will collect money, raise the pensions with some coins, lay asphalt with some patches and will spend lots of money on numerous galactic and mysterious projects. The taxpayer, who’s the basis of the state, will be ignored and remembered only during the next phase of payments. It means that the state has turned into a body, which harms the average citizen, hinders and creates problems. Regardless of lofty speeches, opulent projects and strategies all the projects presented by the government contain overt or covert mechanisms of levying money. You can ask any account for a detailed explanation. The tax powers given to communities are in fact only a small element of the big initiative. The government substantiates that by doing this the budget of the communities will enlarge. Then what? What will the money of additional taxpaying be spent on? First of all the money will be spent on buying new furniture for the office of the community head; the computer monitor will be replaced with an LCD screen, new car and other such things. Even the members of the ruling coalition have no doubt about this. So does the population. And this is the reason why every initiative is accepted so negatively by everyone. Indeed, the head of the government says that the media is trying to show everything in dark colors. In fact the government (during the tenure of Sargsyan and the ones before him) has darkened everything so much that there are no bright colors left in the palette of the journalists. Since the first day of his office Tigran Sargsyan set an objective to change the way of thinking of the statesmen. Soon the 2 years of his office will come and still no changes among the statesmen. Instead Sargsyan has become a Republican. Moreover, the Prime Minister, being an intelligent and polite person joined the political team, the main perspective of which is to squeeze money from the population. It is a separate topic to speak about the reasons of such a behavior. But this reality is actually the best explanation why people exclaim “c’mon” when the government starts to speak about the fight against corruption, black market, monopolies and other negative things. They do it just like how Tigran Sargsyan responded to one of the statements of a citizen on his blog.
