General declaration of incomes and property to be introduced in Kazakhstan by 2017

There are plans to introduce the general declaration of incomes and assents in Kazakhstan by 2017, Tengrinews.kz report citing Kazakhstan Finance Minister Bolat Zhamishev as saying at a round-table meeting. "In general, individuals are the final beneficiaries of any economic activities. There is an individual behind any capital and any property. We can keep talking about tax administration, but this system will be far from perfection if we cannot monitor the property of final beneficiaries. And I think that we can now speak of a gradual transition to general reporting by 2017," Zhamishev said. According to him, the gradual transition includes preparation of the legislative base by 2014, as well as creation of data processing centers and expansion of the existing call-center. The plan is the the state workers will be the first to submit their declarations in 2014. They will be followed by employees of the state companies, national holdings, national development institutes and national companies. In 2015 the said persons will have to submit the declaration on results of 2014. According to the Minister, the state workers will be submitting declarations of a different format. "Employees of other authorities and state companies will submit a basic declarations in 2015, except for those who submitted their declarations in 2014. Those who submitted the initial declarations in 2014 will submit their next declaration in 2015. All other persons will submit a basic declaration in 2016 and the next one in 2017," Zhamishev explained. The Minister named the cash amounts to be registered in the declaration that don't required a confirmation. "We have calculated and decided that the cash amount cannot exceed $20 thousand or 3 million tenge. We have calculated an average salary for 7 years and defined that if the person managed to save 50 percent of his earnings, he will have 3 million tenge, not more than $20 thousand. If he has more cash than that, he has to place the money on his bank account by December 31. He can withdraw them on January 2, but they on December 31 he has to show that he really has these funds by depositing them on his bank account," the Finance Minister explained. The law on general reporting was supposed to be submitted to the Parliament in the first half of 2012. The system currently in place has only the state workers submitting their income declarations. By Aidana Ussupova