Video: Widespread Non-Issuance of Receipts Continues, Says Pashinyan

We continue to receive reports about the widespread non-issuance of receipts. This was stated by the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, at the beginning of today's government meeting on January 9.

He added that he has discussed an idea with the head of the State Revenue Committee (SRC): “Just as we are making legislative changes allowing the traffic police to initiate administrative proceedings based on citizens' recordings, I suggested to the SRC chairman that the tax authority be able to initiate administrative proceedings based on videos that prove the non-issuance of receipts. This is the right path,” said Pashinyan.

Justice Minister Rustam Badasyan noted that there is a problem in this regard, as cases of non-issuance of receipts are typically declared invalid by courts, because it is not possible to prove the issue of whether or not a receipt was given. To resolve this dispute, about two years ago, it was proposed to equip tax inspectors with appropriate technical means to record the purchasing process, but negative conclusions were drawn by the Ministry of Finance. We had the idea to do the same; we were studying various European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decisions to understand whether such recordings would imply any violations, as it could imply an infringement of personal privacy. However, we found that if the recording is done at the business, it does not concern personal data. Now we are ready to proceed along this path with the SRC and the Ministry of Finance so that recordings can be made by inspectors,” said the minister.

In response to the Prime Minister's remark that he meant such recordings should be made by citizens, Badasyan replied that the fact of the inspection implies the opening of an order and a specific time frame that must be fixed for the purchase to take place. “In this respect, recording by a citizen may be problematic,” he added.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reacted, stating: “I am posing the problem; you need to find solutions. Go and find solutions. A person must have the opportunity to fix the violation, post it on their social media page, and the administrative authority must be obliged to act and fine. Today we say that it is not allowed to throw the remains of a cigarette or garbage from a car, do this or that, but the citizen witnessing this has, in fact, no leverage to act. For example, if I saw someone throwing garbage from their car, what can I do? Call the police and then be summoned for questioning and so on, but in the end, I may not be able to prove it, and it will turn into a different story.”

Head of the SRC David Ananyan stated that legislative initiatives must be proposed to solve this problem, and they will do so.

Pashinyan also emphasized that as far as he recalls, absolute rights do not exist. The Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan stated that the absolute right is the right to be free from torture, to which the Prime Minister responded with a smile: “Yes, and we all must fully utilize this right to be free from torture by tax receipts.”

“Excuse me, if a shop worker enters a citizen's house, opens a drawer and takes, say, 300 drams, what will the citizen do? They will say, ‘Well, that’s the worker from the shop across the street, let them do it?’ They will likely catch them by the hand,” said the Prime Minister.