CLT Committee Chairs and AmCham ED meet with New Head of Revenue Service

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Chairs of the Commercial Law and Tax Committee, Andrew Coxshall, Robin McCone, Ted Jonas and Lasha Gogiberidze and the Executive Director of AmCham Amy Denman met with Irakli Gvaramadze, Head of the Georgian Revenue Service and his first two Deputies on April 1.

AmCham stressed that a clear and transparent tax system is a main driver to improve the business climate. We stressed that our members are doing their utmost to be compliant and to follow a legally acceptable interpretation of Tax Law. However, tax auditors consistently make highly unconventional interpretations of the law causing enormous waste of time and resources for all concerned parties. We requested that the Revenue Service professionalize and standardize interpretation of tax law.

The AmCham team also introduced our Chamber, its activities and talked briefly about our advocacy work in several key areas of importance to members. Mr. Gvaramadze described the changes he has begun to institute within the Revenue Service to create more efficient processes with the aim to make tax compliance easier.

Mr. Gvaramadze informed that the dispute resolution department has been instructed to create a manual of precedents in cases where the tax payer wins. He believes that this will improve the standardization of interpretation of tax law.

We agreed to schedule a 2-3 hour working meeting in the near future to go into detailed discussions about compliance issues and other important issues that our members are facing related to revenue collection.

[photos of the event (1)]