Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 13
By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:
Azerbaijan needs to increase the number of taxpayers, Ziyad Samadzade, chairman of the parliamentary committee on economic policy, industry and entrepreneurship, said on Feb. 13 addressing the "Taxes. Transparency. Development" conference.
An increase in the number of taxpayers will significantly increase tax revenues to the state budget without the need to resort to increase the tax burden, he added.
“Sometimes the tax burden remains unchanged for years, while the growth of tax revenues is achieved due to the increase in the number of taxpayers,” he said. “However, we have problems caused by the difficulties Azerbaijan faced during the transition to the non-oil economy. We exempted the population working in agriculture sphere from taxes, and this makes 35-36 percent of economically active population.”
The MP noted that the low number of taxpayers negatively affects the image of the Azerbaijani state as well.
“Economically active population grows every year in Azerbaijan, new jobs are opened, but the number of taxpayers doesn’t grow,” Samadzade said. “This is a serious problem and we need to solve it. It is necessary to improve labor relations, especially in construction sphere. Presently, the funds collected from the payment of taxes account for only 8-9 percent of GDP. This is a very low indicator. That’s why we must improve transparency in this area.”
For the ten months of 2017, Azerbaijan registered 134,556 new taxpayers, including 9,864 legal entities and 124,702 individuals.