“General taxation of dividends can damage the SME and the overall investment environment of Armenia” – Sergey Muradyan, the CEO at Step Consulting.

On March 1, on the unified website for the publication of drafts of legal acts, e-draft.am, the RA draft law "On Amendments to the Tax Code" was published, according to which Part 4 of Article 159 of the RA Tax Code should be invalidated. i.e. in the event of the adoption of the law, individuals who perform as participants/shareholders of the business can no longer return the income tax at the rate of 5 percent paid from the distributed profit (the same 5 percent is returned on the condition that the individual who is a shareholder/participant invests it in the authorized capital of the organization).
The CEO at Step Consulting Sergey Muradyan has shared his observations in regards to the draft:
“Here arise several questions:
- The justification of the law states that within the span of 2019-2022 28.7 billion drams were returned to individuals who received dividends from the state budget. In that case, what was the total tax income from dividends to the state budget in that same period, i.e. what percentage of the total amount was returned?
- It is also a question of how much of the said 28.7 billion was returned to the SME business and how much to the large ones.
- Why does the State Revenue Committee perform as the initiator of the mentioned amendment, if according to the Charter of the Ministry of Finance, the elaboration of the policy and methodology of the administration of tax, customs and other incomes is the function of the Ministry of Finance and the SRC can only participate in it?
Naturally, our budget needs additional incomes, but at this stage these can be found outside the SME.”
According to Sergey, the said amendment of the law contains certain contradictions with the Government program for 2021-2026, in the “economic” section of which the Government plans to increase the investment attractiveness, and the availability of this tool seems specifically attracting to the relocated business.
06 March 2023, Monday |
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