Azerbaijan to cut tax burden of SMEs [UPDATE]

By  Trend

The main goal in amending Azerbaijan's Tax Code is to ease the tax burden on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Azerbaijani Minister of Taxes Mikayil Jabbarov told reporters in Baku on April 17.

He said that under the order of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, work has been carried out in recent months to improve the legislation regulating the tax sphere, primarily the Tax Code and a number of other legislative acts.

"The key goal is to significantly ease the tax burden on SMEs and improve tax administration, and thus support the development of entrepreneurial activity in the country. As I have said, this particularly applies to small and micro businesses," he said.

As for medium and large businesses, according to Jabbarov, here the main areas are increasing the level of transparency and internal reporting of activities by these enterprises, and compliance with the requirements of the tax legislation.

"This, in turn, will guarantee their competitiveness on the one hand, and on the other - allow to ensure the stability of tax payments in advance and clearly define the level of budget revenues. This will allow to timely realize the current state social infrastructure projects," Jabbarov said.

He went on to say that the difference between disciplined taxpayers and violators will increase from the legislative point of view.

"Thus, there will be formed such a legislation and administration that will allow disciplined entrepreneurs to carry out their activities more calmly and transparently," Jabbarov said.

The Tax Code of Azerbaijan is effective from January 1, 2001.