"Fact" daily writes:
There was a time when the government took a small initiative related to pensions, say, it raised it by a couple of thousand drams or introduced a "cashback" program of 5 thousand drams, it did PR for the citizens.
Pashinyan also constantly pretended at the government meetings that they increased the pension, and it doesn't matter that they made small, pitiful increases, and not all at once, but in stages, so as to show many steps to the public.
Even now, in his last Facebook post on this topic, he emphasized that the increase of pensions was mentioned five times.
The main problem is that people have already forgotten when Nikol Pashinyan's government last raised pensions.
Naturally, neither pensions nor salaries will increase this year.
Since last year, the officials of the economic sphere of Pashinyan's government have been thinking about how to collect new taxes and duties in order to fulfill the budget.
It is within the framework of this policy that some sectors of economic activity have been removed from the field of turnover tax and have already been transferred to the universal taxation system, where the latter will have to pay VAT and profit tax instead of turnover tax.
In this context, tax equalization takes place, when the tax privileges for small and medium businesses are eliminated, and they operate within the framework of the tax dimension where representatives of large businesses also operate.
In fact, representatives of large businesses get an advantage, and small and medium-sized businesses face difficulties or are closed.
And, in general, tax rates have increased since this year, and in a number of directions, they have simply doubled. For example, representatives of businesses operating in the trade sector will pay 10 percent instead of the previous 5, representatives of the public catering sector will pay 12 percent instead of 6, and those operating in production will pay 7 percent instead of 3.5.
On the other hand, at the initiative of the authorities, the taxation of a number of professional works and services will be transferred to the general taxation system from this year, as a result of which the tax burden of those operating in these fields will increase.
Examples include legal, accounting, management consulting, advertising and market research, building construction, real estate operations, temporary staffing, healthcare, and more.
But the authorities are not satisfied with this and direct their tax press in the direction of the citizens as well. From now on, Yerevan residents will have to pay much more for garbage collection than before.
From this year, the income tax refund of the mortgage loan will be limited in Yerevan. And the property tax will continue to rise. If, for example, in 2021 the property tax burden for the reporting year was 25% of the product of the established rate, then this year it will already be 75%.
It is no coincidence that the economists' estimates are that leaving the "big fish" alone, the authorities have gone after the citizens in every possible way to rip taxes out of the citizens' pockets. It is natural that against the background of the general increase in the tax burden, life in Armenia becomes significantly more expensive, because, in the end, this burden falls on the common consumer. on their shoulders, whose incomes have not increased, but these people have to pay more for the same services and products.
And the saddest thing is that a huge part of the taxes paid to the state budget do not serve to solve the problems of the citizens, either the authorities dust themselves with extravagant and meaningless expenses, or they are provided for the purpose of servicing the state debt. Armenia's public debt is also growing exponentially, because the authorities not only do not intend to reduce their expenses and switch to austerity mode, but also constantly tend to attract new debts.
ARSEN SAHAKYAN
