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On March 4, the National Assembly began the work of the regular sittings.

The parliament approved the agenda of the regular5 sittings being convened on March 4, after which the debate of the drafts began.

The package of draft laws On Making Amendments and Amendments to the RA Tax Code and On Making Amendments to the law HO-269-N of June 12, 2024 authored by the deputy of the NA Civil Contract Faction Hayk Sargsyan was debated in the first reading. The initiative will be debated in a special procedure: The debate will be implemented within twenty-four hours after adopting it in the first reading in the second reading,

The volume of winning games and bookmakers are growing at the last 13 years. If in 2010 the turnover amounted to $ 35 million, the ratio of taxes was $ 2.6 million, that is, 7.2 percent, it increased more than 440 times in 2023, reaching 15.8 billion USD. The collected taxes amounted to 67 million USD or 0.4% of the volume. The author of this package Hayk Sargsyan said this.

The MP noted that a number of legislative amendments have been made in the last 5 years, which have been aimed at increasing the tax burden, but as analyzed, the steps taken are not enough, and it is necessary to increase the tax burden again. Taking into account these and other circumstances, the MP offered by the draft to set a 10% turnover tax in addition to existing taxes and duties.

“Analyzing the international experience, we see that in many countries: 10% and higher turnover tax, particularly - in Georgia, 15% - in Australia, 5-20% - in Germany, 20-22% - in Italy, 12% - in Poland, 8-16% in Portugal, 8-10% - in France, and 15% in Hungary,” the deputy said.

Taking into consideration the importance of the issue, by the RA Prime Minister’s proposal, in case of adopting it, the amendments will enter onto force from April 1. It is expected that after the adoption of the draft law the state revenues will increase by about 13 billion AMD a year.

Hayk Sargsyan answered the deputies’ questions, which referred to the reliability of the betting, the possibility of restricting bets, the possibility of reducing the shadow economy and the means of combating gambling.

In her question, the deputy Hasmik Hakobyan touched upon the claims of bookmaker companies that in recent years the number of players has decreased in recent years, but Hayk Sargsyan did not agree with her. “The companies also said that the number of players has decreased, but I cannot understand the decrease of the number of players when the volumes have increased 440 times in the last 13 years. In 2018, when we considered this a disaster, we had draft laws that came to make restrictions, the volume increased by 20 times since 2018. In 2019, when we analyzed the numbers of 2018, then at that time the NA Vice President Alen Simonyan was saying that this was a disaster, and we had to fight against the disaster, and we could not fight the disaster, and the disaster increased 20 times. In this respect, we need to raise taxes, and we will add restrictions, and create opportunities for state bodies to fully ban the winning games in the Republic of Armenia one day,” the author of the initiative said.

The Deputy Chair of the NA Standing Committee on Economic Affairs Babken Tunyan presented the endorsement of the Committee, noting that it was debated in detail at the Committee. The co-rapporteur referred to Hayk Sargsyan’s some claims and gave clarifications.

The Deputy Minister of Finance Arman Poghosyan presented the opinion of the Government on the revised version of the package.