Jazeera Net-Tehran

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US sanctions have renewed talk of an end to tax evasion in Iran aimed at cutting the country's budgetary dependence on oil revenues.

Iran's tax affairs organization has been talking for two decades about the need for a "comprehensive tax collection plan". However, successive governments have retreated from their application under "white-collar" pressure, leading to widespread tax evasion across the country.

Modern methods
There has been a lot of talk recently in the Iranian media about the phenomenon of renting bank accounts and POS devices for tax evasion, which led to the entry of the Organization of Tax Affairs on the line, and the disclosure of huge statistics on the size of economic defaults such as business activity through business cards to other people or the hiring of fake companies for tax evasion.

Hadi Khan, director of the Anti-Money Laundering and Tax Evasion Department at the Tax Affairs Organization, revealed that some tax-exempt entities, such as non-profit organizations and free zones, have rented POS machines and contributed to tax evasion.

According to the department's statistics, tax evasion amounted to 40,000 billion tomans (about $ 3.5 billion) this year.

The Organization of Tax Affairs calls on the network of banks and supervisory organizations to cooperate to reduce the phenomenon of tax evasion by disabling suspicious POS machines until the end of the current Iranian year.

The number of points of sale distributed seven million devices, according to the network of Iranian banks.

Khani: Some tax-exempt entities have rented POS machines and contributed to tax evasion (Al Jazeera)

Electronic system
The Iranian official said that his country is moving rapidly towards the implementation of an "intelligent electronic system" to reduce the phenomenon of tax evasion. Therapeutic and other occupations. "

During the past period, the concerned authorities were able to survey about 8,000 bank accounts out of the 500 million bank accounts and document a tax evasion of 24,000 billion Iranian tomans (more than $ 2 billion).

In addition to the difficulty of obtaining the data of bank accounts of the powerful, the huge amount of tax evasion files belonging to the poor segment of society has become a challenge to the authorities who have announced their intention to fight the phenomenon.

The results of the survey, which included part of the bank accounts, led to many people who had already submitted their identification documents to open bank accounts in return for a cheap price.

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Traditional methods
In contrast, MP Farid Mousavi, a member of parliament's economic committee, criticizes the tax organization for adopting traditional methods of collecting taxes and for failing to implement the comprehensive plan approved 20 years ago.

He pointed out that some social values ​​still encourage tax evasion, stressing the need to "betray" the phenomenon, adding, "It is not fair to take taxes from employees and workers before receiving salary, while there is no data on the income of some other professions, which make up 20% Of the country's economy. "

For its part, the Article 90 Committee in Parliament revealed a tax evasion worth two thousand billion tomans in a bank without naming it, stressing that it will do its best to highlight the tax evasion in banks and financial institutions.

Turnover of bank accounts
Some economic circles in Iran have put forward in the past few months a plan to rely on the turnover of bank accounts, which make up 60% of the country's financial deliberations, to put an end to the phenomenon of tax evasion and prevent the leasing of bank accounts to others.

The plan sparked a backlash, fearing it would open the door to government interference with private privacy, which was quickly denied by government circles. "Taxes will be taken from accounts with a turnover of five billion tomans (about $ 500,000) a year and that the plan does not include all bank accounts," he said. .

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The Organization for Tax Affairs announced that the concerned authorities are obliged to send the data of those bank accounts to verify that they did not commit an irregularity in the payment of taxes, and attributed the reason to achieve justice in collecting taxes.

Just system
Social tweeters launched campaigns calling for a fair system of tax collection and relief for the working class, which earns less than $ 200 a month.

They also demanded the installation of POS machines in doctors' clinics, and not to allow tax evasion in this rich category at the expense of the poor, as they put it.

US sanctions on Iranian oil exports have intensified the fight against tax evasion in the country as part of nationally approved mechanisms to cut budgetary dependence on oil revenues.