Yerevan/Mediamax/. Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsian admitted today that the main load of tax checks and payments fell on the share of small and medium enterprise (SME) in 2009.

Mediamax reports that the Prime Minister said this at the session of the government, referring to the information on efficiency of tax checks, prepared by his assistant.

According to Tigran Sargsian, the total number of tax checks increased by 82% in 2009, but at that the volume of means, transferred to the state budget following their results, reduced by 25%.

“Our policy is based on minimum communication with taxpayers: we should bother them only in cases, when they do not fulfill their tax liabilities”, Prime Minister reminded.

According to the information, the number of checks increased by 82% in 2008-2009. The increase in the number of checks among big business made 30%, increase in the number of checks among companies, who possess annual turnover of up to 58mln AMD – 70%. The number of checks among all other taxpayers increased by 250%.

“At that, the volume of sums, collected from the representatives of big business following the results of the checks, 4 times yields to the sums, collected from other groups. At that, this difference increased 3.8 times in 2008, and 4.6 times in 2009. It turns out that we demonstrate milder attitude towards big business, as compared to the small one”, Tigran Sargsian stated.

Prime Minister stated that this information should yet be thoroughly analyzed, “but the situation evidences that we have a problem in terms of efficiency and the main criticism in this case is to the Ministry of Finance, which is in change of economic policy”.