Speaking with the representatives of small and medium businesses at the second session of SME Development Council, Prime-Minister Tigran Sargsyan introduced today the forthcoming changes to the tax legislation, elaborated by the Government of Armenia. He highlighted that many of those legislative changes are targeting better business conditions for small and medium enterprises. Those changes are expected to come into force in 2012 and will facilitate doing business in Armenia, in particular, by creating equal opportunities for various business groups, including importers and exporters and small, medium and big businesses. The amendments will also shift the tax burden from the SMEs to big businesses.
Among other important things, noted the Prime Minister, is expansion of number of areas of commercial activity at privileged tax conditions for SMEs (this will mainly relate to production of food, hotels, transportation of people by mini-buses, parking lots and auto repairs), and increase of VAT refund threshold from 100,000 AMD to 10,000,000 AMD without check-ups and audit by tax bodies. Besides, the government will require conducting big transactions using bank transfers instead of cash operations. This will also create better conditions for small and medium enterprises.
