The Iranian National Tax Administration collected 800 trillion rials ($17.7 billion) in tax during the first 11 months of the current Iranian year (March 21, 2017-Feb. 19).

INTA’s deputy head, Nader Jannati, also told Fars News Agency on Tuesday that direct tax returns stood at about 456 trillion rials ($10.1 billion) and the proceedings from value added tax hit 354 trillion rials ($7.86 billion) during the period.

“As we speak, 86% of the total taxation revenues anticipated for this year has been realized,” he said.

According to Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Masoud Karbasian, the share of oil revenues in the government’s general revenues reduced from 46% six years ago (March 2012-13) to 34% last year (March 2016-17).

This has been made possible mainly as a result of increased tax revenues. President Hassan Rouhani’s economic strategy to reduce the dependency of the country’s finances on oil revenues has proved effective, as it is two years now the government is earning more through taxes than oil sales.

Chairman of Iranian National Tax Administration Kamel Taqavi-Nejad recently said the government earned 150% more from tax than from oil in the last fiscal year (March 2016-17).

Iran collected taxes worth 1014.7 trillion rials ($22.5 billion) in the last fiscal year (March 2016-17), registering a rise of 28.1% compared with the year before, while it made 738.8 trillion rials ($16.41 billion) from selling oil and petroleum products.

Speaking during the 11th Conference on Tax and Fiscal Policies 2018 last week at the Faculty of Economics, Tehran University, Karbasian said the tax-GDP ratio improved to 8% last year (March 2016-17) compared with 4.5% in the fiscal 2012-13.

“The share of taxation in government revenues is still far from ideal despite improvements of late,” the minister said, adding that tax-GDP ratio hovers around 20% in developing countries.

Chairman of Majlis Economic Commission Mohammad Reza Pour-Ebrahimi said a total of 70 trillion rials ($1.5 billion) were earned during the first eight months of the current fiscal year from newly identified economic operators.

Noting that tax evasion stands at 30-40% of total tax revenues in Iran annually, the lawmaker said tax evasions cost the country an estimated 400 trillion rials (about $8.7 billion) every year.

According to Pour-Ebrahimi, tax revenues would be the backbone of the next year’s budget.

Source:

2018, Iran Tax Revenues Top $17 Billion in 11 Months, Wednesday, March 7, p.1,<https://financialtribune.com>