“At the meeting with RS, the companies feel that they are being questioned” – the Association

The actions of the Revenue Service against companies with the status of a virtual zone are discriminatory, – Shorena Kopaleishvili, the head of the Association of Georgian Virtual Zone Persons, spoke on “Business Formula”. According to her, companies are not allowed to work stably.

“State structures decided to conduct a massive audit quite quickly and incomprehensibly. These audits themselves are not in the desired condition. In certain circumstances when the Revenue Service does not enter the company in the format of an official audit and various requests are submitted to the companies on a daily, weekly basis. This in turn hinders a stable work process. Companies do not feel like they are being interviewed, but rather that they are being questioned by the Revenue Service.

At this point, a complaint has been filed regarding the forms of relations between the Revenue Service,” said the head of the Association of Georgian Virtual Zone Persons.

Speaking about the reasons of Revenue Service with companies, Shorena Kopaleishvili doubts that the state is attempting to fill the budget in this way.

“There are doubts. We have no justification for this. “It is suggested that the state needed to attract some funds to the budget, but this should not have happened in this way,” Shorena Kopaleishvili remarked.

According to her, as a result of the wrong approach of the government, investors are leaving the Georgian market.

“No investor avoids paying taxes. They just require clearly defined criteria. In February, we suddenly received methodical references, which raised even more questions than gave us an answer. Legally, a methodological reference is not a legal document of such force on which an investor can rely. The investor relies primarily on the law, which unfortunately is still ambiguous. I have information that the Revenue Service is still working on a specification and a new methodological reference.

The state was very proud of the law, which was supposed to attract several foreign investments. It did happen, but at this point, we got it that investors are leaving and the law just stays on paper. There is also a tendency for investors to try to find alternative status to continue operating. “It damages the reputation of the country,” said Shorena Kopaleishvili.

The tax dispute between companies with the status of a virtual zone and the Ministry of Finance has been going on already for two years. Foreign companies are requesting clarification of the ambiguous law to determine in which case a company with the status of a virtual zone is taxed with profit tax and in which case not. At this point, the amount of fines imposed on companies operating in the field of information technology exceeds one million GEL.

Source: https://businessformula.ge/News/8090