YEREVAN. – “Throughout Armenia’s history such increase in income tax has not been envisioned, and especially during crisis. We seriously doubt these taxes will be collected,” Armenian Government’s State Revenue Committee Deputy Head Gagik Khachatryan stated during the governmental session on Thursday.

Khachatryan said these words after Deputy Minister of Finance Pavel Safaryan introduced the revenue section of the draft state budget for 2012. According to Safaryan, a 100-billion-dram ($270,800,085 US) increase is planned for income tax.  

As per Khachatryan, the draft budget does not clearly specify how revenues will be increased. There are no economic growth predictions that would have allowed assessing how these revenues are to be increased.   

According to PM Tigran Sargsyan, however, the income tax will be increased by way of expanding the tax base and toughening up administration. As maintained by Sargsyan, even though this is a “most serious” problem, it is quite realistic.