Disclosure about taxing people’s interest on bank deposits

The issue of tax on deposits in banks has been the subject of serious debates in recent days, and it was after the controversial disclosure of the CEO of Parsian Bank that the issue of whether governments have the right to tax citizens’ deposits was opened.

Kurosh Parvizian, the CEO of Parsian Bank, announced last week: “The assessment sheet that the tax organization has unjustly drawn against people’s deposits in banks, now amounts to 100 thousand billion tomans, and this is right reaching into the pockets of depositors and people’s deposits, and I am asking Mr. Dr. Farzin, as well as the honorable officials of the Ministry of Economy, Dr. Khandozi, and the honorable government to correct and renew this issue.”

These revealing words, the video of which was republished many times on social networks, have faced the sharp reactions of citizens on social networks.

Tax riot on citizens’ bank accounts

But where did the story begin? Last week, on July 20th, the spokesperson of the Economic Commission of the Parliament announced that the budget law stipulates that interest on deposits of legal entities will be taxed.

Mehdi Taghiani, in response to the question whether the interest of bank accounts is taxed? He said: Many legal entities keep their assets in banks for a long time and receive huge profits; Therefore, in the approved budget law, tax is collected from the deposit interest of legal entities. It is not true that the banks said that we have paid our economic activity tax first and then we will deposit the profit to the account of legal entities and the tax on this profit should be paid.

In fact, what was disclosed by the CEO of Parsian Bank pointed to the same point, that the banks in the current situation have defined another new tax for them, and that they should calculate the interest of the citizens’ deposit accounts, calculate the tax from this interest and pay it to the government treasury.

Interest on citizens’ deposits in the tax trap

Dr. Kamran Nedri, an economist and banking expert, also said in this regard that the issue of calculating the bank tax is not a new thing. This university professor continued: “You see, banks always paid taxes according to instructions and approvals, but there was no such thing as paying taxes on the actual money earned in the banks, but the issue raised was that a new tax has been approved that should be paid from citizens’ deposits.”

This economist continues: “The issue that Dr. Parvizian mentions about the amount of taxes is correct, but it should be emphasized that in fact the banks say that this amount was deducted from the deposit interest and if this tax had not been collected, the interest on the deposit that the bank paid to the citizens would have increased, and of course this is also the claims of the banks and it is not clear that they would have necessarily acted in this way regarding the interest payment.”

In the meantime, it should be noted that bank deposits are usually known as the main destination of traditional investors to earn risk-free and guaranteed profits among people. This problem has caused a large amount of liquidity in the country to be invested in bank deposits. On the other hand, the profits of these deposits were exempt from paying taxes; However, the reform of the government’s budget structure and the changes in tax laws and it seems that the government’s reliance on taxes instead of oil sales have finally made the government think of taxing this large amount of cash.

Taxes for individuals or legal entities

The main goal of the government was to tax all real and legal bank deposits; But this issue could have many economic consequences in practice. It seems that in the first step and after examining the conditions, it was finally decided that the tax will be applied only to the bank deposits of law firms, and the interest of the bank deposits of all law firms will be taxed, and the bank deposits of natural persons will continue to find these conditions.

Interest on deposits

But now there is a serious contradiction between the words of Mehdi Taghiani as a member of parliament and Korosh Parvizian as the CEO of Parsian Bank, because while the member of parliament and a member of the Economic Commission announces the withdrawal of tax from the profits of legal account deposits, the CEO of Parsian Bank has clearly mentioned issuing invoices for the deposits of all bank accounts.

Considering this contradiction, it seems that the Minister of Economy, the head of the Central Bank, and the head of the country’s tax organization should provide a sufficient explanation about the current situation and the issue of “the diagnosis sheet that the tax organization has unjustly drawn against people’s deposits in banks”.

According to what Mehdi Taghiani has said and is proposed in the law, is the tax only collected from the deposit interest of legal entities, or according to the claim of the CEO of the bank, a tax has been defined for all deposit interest without the citizens knowing? This is a question that the Minister of Economy should answer now.

Source: Economy 24