Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) – Legislative Chamber of Oliy Majlis of Uzbekistan held a government hour on 6 September at the initiative of the UzLiDeP faction.

To answer the deputies’ questions “On the work to ensure the implementation of the concept of improving the tax policy of the Republic of Uzbekistan and measures to improve the efficiency of the work”, Behzod Musaev, chairman of the State Tax Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan, was invited to the lower house of parliament.

As noted, an analysis of the work done in the tax policy over the past period showed that as a result of reducing the tax burden, simplifying the tax system, creating an equal competitive environment and determining a long-term tax policy for investors, tax rates were reduced primarily for business entities, property tax rate for legal entities reduced from 5 to 2 percent, income tax rate - from 14 to 12 percent, dividend tax rate - from 10 to 5 percent. Contributions to extrabudgetary state trust funds have been canceled. The taxation system has been simplified from 19 to 15 types of taxes have been reduced, calculations of a single social payment and personal income tax of individuals have been generalized, applications in calculating value added tax have been reduced from 9 to 5, the invoice form has been simplified. As a result, the forecasted budget revenues planned for the first half of this year were fulfilled by 108.4 percent (39.1 trillion soums), the growth rate was 161 percent. Tax debt amounted to 1.9 trillion. soums and compared to the beginning of the year (3.0 trillion soums) decreased by 1.1 trillion. soums.

The information noted that the number of payers of value added tax relative to the beginning of the year increased by 6 times and as of 1 July amounted to 41.7 thousand, as a result of which 11.2 trillion were received. soums, which is 5.2 trillion. soums (187.7%) more compared to this period last year.

A certificate was posted on the official website of the State Tax Committee and 48 thousand taxpayers received certificates through the website. As a result, an opportunity was created to verify the registration of an entity as a VAT payer before this entity draws up a contract or agreement on doing business with another business entity. To maintain farm accounting, a separate software product has been created and is tested on an experimental basis.

In the first half of this year, 55.5 thousand business entities were formed and the total number increased by 27.1 thousand (195.4%) compared to this period last year.

During the “Government Hour”, along with the results achieved, special attention was paid to the shortcomings made in the sphere, the existing problems and the issues of their solution were considered.

So, in order to fully and timely ensure the priority tasks outlined in the Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan dated June 29, 2018, the deputies raised questions about the possibility of developing and submitting to the Legislative Chamber of the Parliament a “Road Map” for the implementation of the important points of the decree that have been planned and have not been implemented yet, providing for improvement of legislative documents, problems were also raised in the systematic continuation of the reduction of the tax burden and the further simplification of the tax system based on Art Amer actions, decisions in the field of improvement of tax administration tasks.

According to the deputies, urgent problems are the regular training of employees of the State Tax Service in matters of calculating taxpayers, including value added tax and corporate income tax, omission and integration of tax calculation with computer-aided accounting software, additional measures to ensure compliance with the forecast parameters of the budgets of the budget system.

Responding to questions from representatives of the parliament, the chairman of the State Tax Committee emphasized that the problems raised could be positively resolved only by fully and timely ensuring the tasks outlined in the presidential decree.

After an active dialogue, deputies expressed their opinions and practical proposals on enhancing the activities of the State Tax Committee, taking into account the requirements of the time, work that remains to be done in the tax system.

At the end of the event, the committees of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis were recommended to develop proposals for improving the scope of legislative documents and the practice of the right to apply. An agreement has been reached on ensuring effective parliamentary oversight of work in this direction.