The year 2025 began with a series of shocking discoveries for the indigenous and still state-forming people of the Third Republic. Many professions and enterprises related to the service sector have been affected by a 5-6–fold increase in the tax burden, while all working citizens living in the Republic are subject to mandatory declaration of all receipts to the account. Having met resistance and faced with its own inability to implement the reforms it had proposed, Nikol Pashinyan’s colonial administration slightly postponed the deadlines for fulfilling the new requirements, abolished annual duties on documents required to fill out the declarations, while raising the threshold for income to be declared.
Let us emphasise right away: no one is against tax declarations as such, the question is (a) the legitimacy of the government using these taxes and (b) its technical implementation. Firstly, they use the tax deductions accompanying the declaration as pre-election ‘bribes’, creating an additional burden on the budget. Secondly, these declarations will not give a tangible increase in budget revenues, as they force people to spend extra hours and days filling in data that the state already knows (recall that Pashinyan was able to fill out the declaration only at the second attempt and in the company of assistants and a number of relevant ministers). It will still not be possible to tax personal transfers (not declared as income), given that by next year, when it will be necessary to pay tax on transfers from relatives from abroad, citizens will take into account the threshold of 300,000 drams and switch to cash or cryptocurrencies. Thus, the declaration in its current form is only intended to distract citizens from urgent issues and force them to spend their valuable time on the crooked state system, as well as to return to shadow economy.
The Young Janissaries have found a new secret to winning the upcoming elections: propose unrealistic and reckless innovations, and then generously reject or postpone them.
But this does not change the fact that many small businesses will close soon, unable to withstand the workload; lawyers will lose most of their civil lawsuits; citizens living outside Armenia will have to get new and unnecessary SIM cards in order to fill out declarations next year and not be outlawed in ‘Real Armenia’; the real cost of transportation, nevertheless, has almost doubled for many residents of the outskirts of the capital. The list of ‘inconveniences’ of the Armenian citizens that arose thanks to Pashinyan and his minions in just a couple of months does not end there.
So, what happened? We have surrendered Artsakh, started demarcation, are racing at full speed towards a ‘peace agreement’ with our sworn neighbour and the opening of the border with Turkey, and are preparing to adopt a ‘regional constitution’ that will take into account the interests of all our neighbours. Where is the promised welfare and prosperity of the ‘crossroads of peace’? Is it really necessary to finally expel all Artsakh Armenians from Armenia in order to finally feel relieved? Or should we take away a dozen more Lexus cars from the ‘exes’ 7 years after the ‘velvet revolution’?
Well, there will be enough scapegoats for Pashinyan for a long time. Following Artsakh Armenians, one can always switch to the Armenians of Syunik, Tavush, Ararat region, etc. One thing is obvious: the previous ‘social contract’ that Pashinyan concluded with his minority in Armenia and on the basis of which he wants to introduce a Constitution in the logic of ‘well-being in return for abandoning Homeland and the Armenian question’ has failed.
Either the colonialists have changed their minds about paying large pay-outs, or the Turkish commandant has decided that the leftovers from the lord’s table are enough for the Armenians.
Everything is in the best post-Soviet traditions of privatisation. Declare a state-owned enterprise unprofitable and sell it cheaply to your associates. What is wrong with the good old loans-for-shares auctions? However, they want to sell the remnants of the state a little more expensively and make money on them before the sale. To do this, it is necessary to keep as many ‘aborigines’ in the country as possible, who will serve the colonialists, and get rid of the thinking or inconvenient ones: entrepreneurs, lawyers, engineers, and Artsakh Armenians who became refugees – by his own fault.
So, what do we know about the Armenian economy now, if we do not read Nikol’s minions at lunch? In 2024, the colonial administration did not collect 8% of the planned taxes, however, distributed many bonuses to its henchmen throughout the country, consistently encouraged the police to suppress rallies, shifted the asphalt of the highways laid by it, cut down healthy trees in Yerevan and planted it with cherry blossom trees, purchased and reprogrammed cash machines on Yerevan buses so that in a few months to remove them and prohibit payment in cash, etc. Obviously, a significant hole has formed in the budget, for which we will have to pay for generations.
Of course, it is always possible to exchange the remnants of the state for debts, as Pashinyan is going to do, following the example of Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Robert Kocharyan. But for now, like any time-server, the commandant is only accumulating new debts, and at high rates, because for some reason the international community still considers investments in the Armenian economy risky. The booklets with the ‘crossroads of peace’, which he distributes at international conferences about and without, do not help.
Obviously, the time-servers did not invest the income generated by the arrival of tens of thousands of wealthy Russians in the development of the Armenian economy. As a result, many Russians have left the country, which has risen in price almost to the level of Western European countries, and the purchasing power of the locals themselves has decreased. The reduction in tax revenues clearly indicates that either the volume of trade in the country has decreased, or some enterprises have returned into shadow. The real exports (excluding re-exports to Russia to bypass sanctions) decreased, including vis-à-vis the Eurasian Economic Union (-11%) and the European Union (-14%). Well, ‘Real Armenia’ is striding along (or stepping forward with wide strides, if we’re to translate and reiterate Brezhnev’s appreciation of development of Soviet Azerbaijan).
Compared to 2018, Armenia’s public debt has almost doubled, while the debt has already reached a critical value of half of Armenia’s gross domestic product (GDP). So why is Pashinyan pulling up debts, while the Telegram channels of his minions are reporting on the rise of the Armenian economy? Firstly, the imitation of vigorous activity and sabotage are the elements of the yellow journalist Pashinyan. Secondly, the logic of ‘slipping into debts to pay off debts’ is ubiquitous in ‘Real Armenia’. This is how people who take out loans to celebrate the New Year, and the government, which wants to buy the sympathies of these people. But who can citizens take a different cue from, if a national aristocracy has not yet been formed in Armenia?
But such a mindset of the authorities and the people is at hand of the Armenian banks, whose income from loan servicing continues to grow (including through uncontrolled fraud). But that is not enough. The colonial administration decided to encourage the owners of some banks and acts as a guarantor of the loan that these banks (Ardshinbank, Acba Bank, ID Bank, Inecobank, Evocabank) will give to Lydian Armenia for operation of mine in Amulsar. Surprisingly, Khachatur Sukiasyan’s Armeconombank is not on the list, and it is noteworthy that Lydian refused a loan from the Eurasian Development Bank. So, you and I, in the face of the Third Republic, are acting as guarantors of the gold mining at Amulsar that is disastrous for Jermuk and its environs, so that Pashinyan can earn before his owners get to Amulsar (why not, under the guise of another ‘concerned eco-activists’ – similar to the ones on the road of life between Artsakh and mainland Armenia).
Some of our fellow citizens thought they had successfully converted their Homeland and identity into a full fridge. Apparently, it turned out that if you live in a colony where the commandants treat you like aborigines, you will not get that either. The Turkish commandant is still ‘giving’ us the basic benefits of civilisation in return for our lands and mineral resources, such as kindergartens and asphalt roads, which are already guaranteed to us by the Constitution that is still in force. As at all times, only the one who exchanges jewellery for glass beads always pays for his stupidity with sweat, tears and blood. The glass beads – gardens, hospitals, and roads – go to the settlers from the metropolis.
