New tax changes will come into force in 2014, which will be soon discussed in Parliament. These changes plan to invest turnover tax for businesses, having up to 58 million AMD turnovers, to promote job creation, reducing income tax in the next 3 years, and stop the legal norm of withholding income tax.
In the conversation with “First News and Analyses” the head of the Republican Union of Employers of Armenia Gagik Makaryan expressed support for the two of these three points. According to him, the reforms, particularly in the field of micro and small businesses, should be implemented very carefully and manage the problems of the small businesses.
The majority of business in Armenia contains small enterprises, and this is the reason that the majority of the tax burden falls on them. The result of the reform cannot be seen, and the economic entities of that category will always suffer.
Makaryan stressed the importance to create jobs, because 470 thousand people are working in the private sector. More than 50 per cent of our level of economic activity depends on the money receiving from abroad, but it is a very risky situation. According to Makaryan, there is a problem either to create jobs or raise wages.
“This balance should be changed to promote job creation. Equal competition is also important.” said G. Makaryan, noting that today’s educational systems, for example, secondary educational institutions do not include the European standards and are left in the old system.
