YEREVAN, April 4. /ARKA/. All organizations providing financial services should be under the control of the Central Bank of Armenia, David Ananyan, the head of the State Revenue Committee (SRC), told journalists on Wednesday. According to the government-proposed changes, the annual duty on running a pawnshop is to increase from the current 100 thousand drams (about $204) to 6 million drams (about $12 thousand), and for money exchange offices -from the current 50,000 drams ($102) to 3 million drams (about $6.1 thousand ).
The decision is opposed by the Union of Currency Dealers, which argues that it would force 80% of money exchange offices to shut down “The state duty on pawnshops in the amount of 100 thousand drams has not been revised over the last 20 years. They should also be aware that the income tax should be reduced from 20% to 18%,” he said.
Ananyan also noted that the duty is an expenditure part, with the payment of which the amount of taxable profit decreases by 18-20%. For comparison he said in 2018 some 129 pawnshops paid 140 million drams in taxes, while 17 banks paid 49 billion drams.
Earlier, Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan said the government would not backtrack on its earlier decision to raise dramatically the size of duties paid by owners of pawnshops and money exchange offices. According to Grigoryan, the dialogue with representatives of pawnshops is impossible. In his words, the amount of duty these companies pay now is simply ridiculous. -0—
