TEHRAN - Head of Iran's National Tax Administration (INTA) Davoud Manzour has said the government’s average monthly tax collections have increased by 80 percent in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21) as compared to the previous year.

According to Manzour, last year every month about 250 trillion rials (about $864 million) of taxes were collected on average, while the figure has reached 450 trillion rials ($1.55 billion) in the current year, Tasnim news agency reported.

According to the official, INTA has been taking serious measures for battling tax evasion so that the organization has discovered more than 170 cases over the past year and the violators have been faced with heavy penalties.

There are many methods of tax evasion and one of the most common is the creation of shell companies, he explained.

“Unfortunately, there are many problems in the regulations and laws regarding company establishment and there is no necessary strictness. We see such cases with regard to business cards and credit cards as well,” the official added.

Back in September, INTA announced that the country’s tax revenues stood at 1.853 quadrillion rials (about $6.4 billion) in the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-August 22).

As reported, of the mentioned figure, 1.17 quadrillion rials (about $4.04 billion) was direct tax, and 670 trillion rials (about $2.31 billion) was indirect tax collected in the five-month period.

Iran’s tax income reached over 3.54 quadrillion rials (about $12.2 billion) in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20).

EF/MA