Not a single item of a new Tax Code Bill, which was submitted to Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon, was approved.
Chairman of the Coordinating Council of Business Associations and Public Organizations of Tajikistan Nekrui Zabirov told AP that the President ordered to revise the Code in the nearest time (three months) and ordered business associations to carry out their independent assessment and validate all changes.
He added that the country’s private sector completely rejects the new Tax Code Bill, which was designed by the Government.
“If President rejects our version of the Code we will try to preserve the existing Tax Code. It is better to preserve the existing Code than approve such new version,” Zabirov said. “New Tax Code should be approved by the President and not by the Government or Ministry of Finance or Tax Committee.”
He said the new Tax Code should take into account President’s ideas he announced in his Annual Message to the Parliament.
“President offered to abolish retail sales tax and nominal wage for non-governmental organizations,” he said.
Zabirov explained that the previous session of the Coordinating Council of Business Associations, held late April, decided to set up a work group to validate changes offered by the private sector for a new Tax Code.
“The work has been launched. The first meeting of the work group was conducted successfully. The process has been launched but we do not have enough time – only two months. This is not enough to finalize the version of the Tax Code which was submitted to the President,” he said.
In the course of the session of the Coordinating Council Chairman of the Free Market Center of Tajikistan Konstantin Bondarenko said that business sector will become more active if the Government decides to simplify tax procedures.
“There is a big chance that those, who as I think, have to hide their tax aspects, will go out of the shadow and start legal business,” he said.
Bondarenko is confident that the new Tax Code Bill must be criticized since this is not the protection of the interests of a narrow circle of businessmen, these are the interests of economic development of the country.
Chairman of National Association of Managers Shavkat Bozorov offers to reject the new Tax Code Bill if it is unable to improve current situation.
“It is better to have the existing Tax Code, even though it is not perfect but we will design a new one. If our goal is to approve the new Tax Code and say that it is going to be more effective, but in reality it will create more problems for business, than there is no point to change anything at all,” Bozorov said.
