The published list of the largest 1000 taxpayers according to separate sectors, types of activities and owners will be discussed in the media for a long time. For that reason we will not discuss separate companies and tax payments by them, instead of which we will focus on an interesting tendency observed in the list of the largest taxpayers.
According to the information of the ministry of finance, during the first quarter of 2011 the amount of tax payments to the state budget was 140 billion drams, which was equal to the quarterly planned level’s 99.9%. Compared to the same period in 2010 the mentioned tax incomes have grown by 10.1 or 12.9 billion drams. The tax income growth was mostly conditioned by the growth of value added tax, income tax, royalty and income tax inflows. 49.1% of the tax and related payments have been paid due to the value added tax, which was equal to 68.8 billion drams and was more than the same rate in the previous year by 8.3% or 5.3 billion drams.
Since the publication of the list of the largest taxpayers journalists and experts are trying to find out whether the tax load has been levied more on large businesses or the small and medium businesses. They are comparing the growth of the tax payments on part of large taxpayers and the general taxes. During the first three months of this year the capacity of total tax payments have grown more (10.1%) than the tax payments on part of the 1000 largest taxpayers (9.3%). Of course the small and medium businesses have their contribution, but as for the largest taxpayers, the situation is different.
Chart 1 shows the payments of large taxpayers according to groups. The first 300 taxpayers have paid 10.5% more tax, and the first 100 – 14.2% more. The first 10 largest taxpayers have paid 30% more tax (8 billion).
As the Chart 2 shows, the largest 5 taxpayers have increased their tax payments by 50%. However, these companies have different contributions to the growth of tax incomes. For example, Samvel Alexanyan’s Alex Grig company has paid 2.1% more tax. K-Telecom has paid 10.3% more tax. Armentel has paid 9.2% less tax. Even though last year in the same period ArmRusGazArd company was the first one to pay the biggest capacity of taxes, this year it is the second one in the list despite the fact that it has paid 40% more tax this year.
Zangezur copper-molybdenum company is in the first place. During the first quarter of the previous year this company went down to the 11th place as it reduced the tax payments to 1.2 billion drams. The reason was the slump of demand and supply of international process. However, the crisis of the mining sector is over and the prices have grown rapidly resulting in the payment of five times more taxes by the copper-molybdenum factory of Zangezur.
It turns out that the half of the entire tax payments to the budget is due to one company only (this company has paid 6.2 billion drams more tax this year). If this is a good thing for a specific company, for the entire economy it is hard to imagine a worse situation. This shows that our economy and budget are based on one or several companies, which can prosper in the short-term but also may go in the wrong direction in case of global economic changes.