Armenia’s Legislation doesn’t Ban Offshore Companies Collaborating with Armenian Enterprises: Vakhtang Mirumyan

Taxing authorities don’t have legal ground to implement control over physical persons, who are not individual entrepreneurs. Vakhtang Mirumyan, RA SRC Deputy Chairman, told about this reporters today at the National Assembly, touching upon uncovering of Panama Papers.

Note, these days ICIJ released the Panama Papers, where three dozens of people from Armenia are included in the offshore structures. Note Mihran Poghosyan, former head of Armenia’s Compulsory Enforcement Service, is also included in the list.

According to V.Mirumyan, tax authorities may be interested in cases when clarification of relations with any company as a result of application of tax control tools, and it’s being revealed that there is interrelationship with enterprises on the offshore zone, and there are unpaid taxes to the state budget as a result. He stated they’ll inform if such cases are be recorded.

To the question, whether they’re going to take any actions, V.Mirumyan replied that the State Revenue Committee (SRC) isn’t entitled to take an extra step.

To the question, whether it’s accepted that the state official has an offshore business and pays his incomes and tax there, and not in Armenia, V.Mirumyan replied, “If taxes are paid in the offshore, should it be clarified if it acts pursuant offshore legislation or not? And what is our current issue—uncovering does he regularly pay them or not? RA legislation doesn’t ban offshore companies to collaborate with Armenian enterprises. It’s another question, can the Armenian enterprise as a result pay less taxes or not?”

V.Mirumyan agreed, that the SRC issue is that as a result of cooperation with an offshore company, it might have paid less, “If SRC obtains appropriate resolution within the criminal case to check, it’ll do that.” To the reporter’s question how many times SRC performed inspections, for instance in Catherine Group or any other company of Mihran Poghosyan, V.Mirumyan replied, that at the moment he didn’t possess statistics, but inspections had been implemented.

By Ani Keshishyan