TEHRAN, Iran, Nov.12
Trend:
Iranian government should remove tax exemptions that are applied to organizations or individuals with high revenues to have an alternative for oil revenues, said an Iranian economist.
Heydar Mostakhdemin discussed the source of taxation as an alternative for oil revenues in the budget for next Iranian year (begins March 21, 2020) in an interview with Trend.
"One of the main issues is that the government and parliament economic policy in recent years was to govern the country by oil revenues, while eventually, lack of sources due to sanctions' pressure has affected the situation," the economist said.
"The government tried to compensate the costs by aid of taxing people that created difficult situation," Mostakhdemin added. "Meanwhile, if the policies were implemented properly, the country would have been more development."
He went on to say: "So far, we have used the oil sale revenues to manage the country, while this approach shall be changed. The debate over taxation is very important and in these regards, the tax should be expanded and the government should accept that there should not be tax exemption for economic activities."
"Individuals that carry out economic activities are obligated to pay taxes, and in case a certain group is in the need of help, the government will support the group by using tax revenues. The policies should identify the individuals that should pay tax during a year and what tax exemptions on organizations should be removed," Mostakhdemin said.
"Some groups with high revenues are still exempted from taxes, while employees and workers pay taxes; the country can be run by preventing tax evasion and removing exemption without using oil revenues," the expert noted.
"To have a strong economic system, all the tax payments and declarations should be monitored, and the oil revenues should be used in infrastructures," the economist said.
"No organizations should be exempted from tax payment; unless the heads of three powers agree to remove the tax exemption completely to have more transparent payments and budget, we will witness economic problems," the expert said.
"Currently, the tax evasion and exemptions happen so often that this has caused criticism; there should be plans to use oil revenues for improving transportation and construction sectors," Mostakhdemin added.