Business Registrations Surge in Armenia

In 2021-2025, that is, in just five years, more legal entities were registered in Armenia than from 2000 to 2011. During this same period, an average of about 9,900 new legal entities are registered annually, whereas in the previous period this number was 3,795. The figures were presented by the RA Minister of Finance, emphasizing that transparency, stability, and equality in the tax sector contributed to this. "Studying the tax policy of the last five years, we can state that a significant increase in the tax burden was made only in the following three directions: royalties in the metal mining sector, excise tax, and state duty on games of chance.

It is obvious that none of these directions targeted essential or socially significant consumption, or the incomes of low-income groups. On the contrary, the tax burden was increased with the logic that our society should receive its fair share from the extraction of subsoil, that harmful consumption should be reduced and a healthy lifestyle encouraged, and that gambling addiction should be curbed.

In this regard, we are more than confident that our tax policy agenda has broad public support and is correctly perceived.

Moreover, in 2021-23, the policy of reducing the income tax rate continued steadily, which in practice means that during the specified period, more than 20 to 28 billion drams less income tax was collected annually from employers and hired employees, or, in other words, that much funds were retained by employers and hired employees, thereby contributing to the development of the economy and the improvement of the well-being of working citizens.

State budget revenues are planned at 3 trillion 91 billion drams, of which tax revenues are 2 trillion 973 billion drams. As a result of the improvement of tax administration, the fight against the shadow economy, as well as tax policy measures, it is expected to ensure an improvement in the tax-to-GDP ratio by 0.4 percentage points compared to the expected figure. By the way, speaking of the expected figure, this year we expect a 1 percentage point improvement."