YOU CANNOT WIN OVER SUPPORT THROUGH TAX AVOIDANCE

Lragir.am
20-09-2007 16:31:33

"I can enumerate at least ten of my addresses over the past four or
five years when I called on the businessmen not to present their
activities as manna for the Armenians," stated the leader of the
United Labor Party Gurgen Arsenyan on September 20 at the Pastark club
when he commented on Prime Minister Serge Sargsyan’s appeal in a TV
interview to businessmen in answer to the question of reporters.

"Business is an activity that generates profit. Business has two
participants: one is the employer, the second is the employee who
produces output. In other words, business is not charity," Gurgen
Arsenyan says.

"Now the address of the prime minister was not a message for
businesses. The prime minister could not address business because
business is an activity. The prime minister addressed the people who
are involved in business, the subjects, who have a wrong idea of how
they should behave toward the society. The prime minister addressed
them," Gurgen Arsenyan says. He says he understood the message of the
prime minister because he has undergone this evolution, and stated
these ideas.

"Spending resources to win over support cannot solve public, national
or civil problems. Public, national or civil problems are solved in
case the businessman pays taxes to sustain the state. All the rest is
another level. The false mindset has been shaped in Armenia, in modern
Armenia, in our society that one can win over support through charity.
This is false charity when you do not pay taxes, hence the support won
through false charity cannot be presented as a public value," Gurgen
Arsenyan says. However, he does not mention the people who are engaged
in false charity, and whom the prime minister had meant. Gurgen
Arsenyan only says his business is legal and transparent.

"The prime minister meant that they should audit themselves, revise
their behavior. In other words, it was addressed to those businessmen
who do not behave so, who think they can continue to win over support
at the expense of taxes they avoided," Gurgen Arsenyan says. Will the
businessmen get the meaning of the message? "With difficulty but they
will," Gurgen Arsenyan says.