YEREVAN. – The merchants, who are protesting the new amendments to Armenia’s Law on Turnover Tax, are pleased with their talk with Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan.

The members of the merchants’ delegation, who came out of the Government Building after their meeting with the PM, told about the aforesaid to the other merchants who have assembled outside the building on Friday.

The delegation members informed that they presented Abrahamyan the controversial points in the new amendments. In their words, the Premier promised to discuss the issues raised and give an answer on Monday, February 2.

In the morning on that day, the merchants will gather outside the National Assembly building and, subsequently, head towards the Government Building to hear the PM’s answer. Until then, however, they will continue working.

The merchants also ended their open-ended sit-in, which they had started outside the Government Building on Friday.

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.

Photo by Arsen Sargsyan/NEWS.am