YEREVAN. – As they had announced earlier, the merchants, who demand the suspension of the new amendments to Armenia’s Law on Turnover Tax, have started resorting to extreme measures.

One of them, Artak Khachatryan, on Friday announced that he is starting an open-ended sit-in outside the Government Building. After this announcement, several other merchants likewise sat in front of the steps of the building, and announced that they support him.

The merchants are chanting slogans and demanding that Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan come out of the building, meet with them, and announce that he is suspending the controversial amendments to the Law on Turnover Tax.

To note, the merchants also have begun writing petitions on stopping their business activities. They will submit these petitions to the government on Sunday, February 1, and with one package.

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 Sunday, February 1, 2015.

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