Azernews.Az

By Nigar Abbasova

The Taxes Ministry has established two new departments as part of structural changes within the body.

A number of structural changes, including establishment of departments of monitoring over tax legislation and tax obligations in accordance with the relevant decision of Taxes Minister Fazil Mammadov.

Structural changes were introduced in accordance with the presidential order dated August 4, 2016, “On improvement of tax administration and approval of directions of reforms in taxation in 2016".

The departments were set up on the basis of the tax crimes analysis and tax debt collection general directorate and tax audit and operative control general directorate. Moreover, taxpayer services department was canceled and replaced by taxpayer service and transparent partnership department.

Baku city tax department and tax department №1 were cancelled and replaced by special and local revenues departments and department for work with small entrepreneurs.

Certain changes to the Tax Code of the country are also on the way. The upcoming amendments include prolongation of the period of “tax holiday”, exemption of certain products from VAT, introduction of simplified tax for representatives of show business. Moreover, starting January 1, 2017 sale of "toxic" assets of insolvent banks and non-bank credit organizations (NBCO) will be exempt from VAT for the period of three years.

The changes are expected to reduce the volume of cash payments, attraction of e-commerce taxation, reduce the tax burden, simplify tax administration, and expand the rights of taxpayers and other issues. In tote, some 201 amendments and 115 new articles were made to the document.

Doing Business 2017 placed Azerbaijan 65th among 190 countries in the global rankings on the Ease of Doing Business, ranking the country among 29 countries that implemented three or more reforms.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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