Money Transfers Between Family Members to Be Exempt from Declaration

The income declaration system will be simplified, taking into account the actual period in effect and the issues and statistics that have emerged during that time. Babken Tunyan, a member of the "Civil Contract" faction, stated this today during the extraordinary session of the National Assembly while presenting the relevant bill for the first reading.

Taking into account the fact that it can be organized easier and smoother for citizens, the following changes have been made: "All citizens of the Republic of Armenia who are required to declare according to the law can refrain from entering and filling out their declarations until the deadline, and their declarations will be considered filled and submitted based on the information visible to the State Revenue Committee (SRC). That is, if a citizen is confident that their received income is exactly what the SRC has filled in, say, their salary, they can do nothing, and accordingly, the declaration filled out based on SRC data will be deemed completed and submitted. Thus, there will no longer be citizens in Armenia who have not filled out and submitted an income declaration; accordingly, we also eliminate the responsibility for not filling out the declaration.

The second important change we are making in the social credit system, meaning the opportunity for people to receive compensation for education and health-related expenses based on the income tax they have paid, will be offered to those who at least log in and submit or validate the declaration, even without changes. The essence is that if a citizen wants to receive something from the state, then they must make certain changes in return.

The third change we are making, since the main emphasis is placed on the fact that through a self-service option, the SRC will have broader access to information and fill out declarations more completely, we are providing the SRC with access to certain data—except for banking confidentiality—but at the same time, we are setting one provision, for example, that if a citizen logs into the income declaration system's relevant platform, in order not to fill out manually how much interest they have received from a deposit, there will be a corresponding field through which the person will give their consent to the SRC, and the SRC will obtain data on income received from deposits on behalf of the citizen, and it will be automatically filled out.

Another important change, which is currently not included in the preliminary version of the bill but is agreed to be made during the transition from the first to the second reading, is that money transfers between family members will not be subject to declaration. This issue has greatly concerned our fellow citizens, and there have been quite a few questions regarding this matter. Although if we hadn't made these changes, it was such that transfers between family members mostly represent exempt income, meaning they are not subject to taxation, we want to clarify through this provision that there is no need to declare money transfers between parents and children, siblings, and spouses; we are talking about non-taxable income. We have also agreed that loans and borrowings received by individuals will also not be subject to declaration, but we will do this not through law but through a government decision," he said.