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New ID Cards and Electronic Reporting Present Problems for Armenian Taxi Drivers

A law was adopted this year, according to which tax returns could be submitted only by having an identification card, which has affected hundreds of taxi drivers. 

Those taxi drivers who haven't submitted their annual returns online through the use of an ID card by April 15 are forced to pay a 20,000 AMD (about $49 USD) administrative fine to the State Revenue Committee. Speaking to the media about this issue today was Association of Automobile Importers of Armenia President Tigran Hovhannisyan. 

According to him, the amount of time allocated by the new law is not enough, since it takes around 1 month just to get the ID card. In addition, there are several technical challenges. 

"There are people who neither have a computer nor understand what to do. I believe that the former prime minister [Tigran Sargsyan] and [RA Minister of Transport and Communication] Gagik Beglaryan have to help for the guys to get their cards and only then require the [tax] returns. They are entirely to blame," he said. 

Hovhannisyan said there were no problems before because they submitted the returns by paper. 

"In 2009, the government established a procedure for licensing individual entrepreneurs, who were separated from taxi service companies. Paying 25,000 dram [about $60] a year, people engaged in activity with individual entrepreneur status," he said. 

The problems arose when a decision was adopted to abandon the system of providing yellow license plates to transportation providers. Instead, special stickers were to be issued to taxi drivers, which never happened. 

"According to Beglaryan's statement, those stickers were to have been provided since April 1. Everyone returned [their] yellow license plates, and we are still waiting for some papers. In fact, it was a very wrong statement; people had individual entrepreneur status, […] and in 2014, the concept of ID cards appeared, through which people have to submit annual returns. Many today have found themselves in a hopeless situation," he said. 

On behalf of all taxi drivers operating within the law in Armenia, Hovhannisyan asked newly appointed Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan to address their issue and postpone the deadline for submitting returns by 6 months.