YEREVAN. – A group of merchants, who are protesting against the amendments to the Law on Turnover Tax, again have assembled outside the Government of Armenia building on Tuesday morning; but this time they stand with their backs to the building.
“The name of our protest today is, ‘disregard against disregard.’ The [protest] action today will be held with [our] back to the Government,” protester Artak Khachatryan stated. He added that their demand remains the same: to meet with the Prime Minister.
The merchants had gathered outside the Government building on Monday, too, and they were demanding to meet with the PM. Instead, it was put to them that ten merchants hold talks inside the Government Building, but the merchants had refused this proposal.
The number of demonstrators is gradually growing, the Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter informed from the scene.
As reported earlier, pursuant to the amendments to the Law on Turnover Tax, which has come into force in Armenia on October 1, 2014, the tax rate for businesses in the country has dropped from 3.5 percent to one percent. But, now, the businesses will have to submit documents on their commodity circulation. And if a business enterprise does not submit a respective document, it will be warned at first, and, subsequently, it will be fined.
The amendments have caused a considerable protest among the country’s small and medium-sized merchants. In their view, asking for these documents from the large businesses is unrealistic because the large businesses often do not provide documents to the small and medium-sized enterprises concerning the products.
The government, on the other hand, justifies these amendments with the need to prevent tax evasion by Armenia’s large businesses.
As a result of protests as well as talks with Armenia’s public sector, however, the government drew attention to the fact that the small businesses lack—for the moment—the proficiency for making an inventory of their goods and products and filling out the respective complicated questionnaires, and therefore decided to extend the aforementioned deadline for four months, until February 1, 2015.
