NOT SATISFACTORY TAX ADMINISTRATION IS REASON FOR SMALL AMOUNTS OF TAX
COLLECTION IN RA, IMF YEREVAN OFFICE DIRECTOR SAYS
YEREVAN, MAY 27, NOYAN TAPAN. IMF Yerevan Office Director James McHugh
stated at the May 27 press conference that one of the main problems
IMF has in Armenia is to increase tax collection. According to him,
for quite a long time, the Fund was concerned about low annual growth
rates of taxes agaist GDP. At the same time, J. McHugh pointed out
that the RA govewrnment aims to ensure an annual growth of the
taxes/GDP index by 0.4 percentage points. J. McHugh indicated that
although Armenia’s tax legislation is fairly good, it is in need of
certain improvements. He expressed an opinion that not satisfactory
tax administration is the main reason for small amounts of tax
collection. In particular, the tax service does not have enough powers
to conduct audits of big taxpayers. According to him, there is no
information exchange between the tax and customs bodies, which
constitutes another problem. At the same time, some improvements have
been made in the sphere – the tax employess no longer choose
themselves the organizations to conduct audit in. As regards the
National Assembly’s decision to reject the proposal for introducing
legislatively a criminal liability for not paying taxes, J. McHugh
said that “sometimes NA prevents in an unjustified way” the
implementation of the reforms in the sphere.