Independent Armenian lawmaker Viktor Dallakyan submitted to the National Assembly a draft Law on Luxury Tax, according to which anyone with an income of $500,000 or property or possessions totaling that amount, would be taxed more than others.

If the law is adopted the collected taxes will go toward raising pensions and benefits for the poor and on support for healthcare.

“Under the current socially difficult situation, the luxuries that the rich -- who became rich through thievery -- afford themselves look like revelry during a plague,” says author of the draft Dallakyan. “This law will give an opportunity not only to tax all the rich, but also collect taxes for a luxurious lifestyle, as it is accepted to do in civil countries.”

According to Dallakyan, such a law exists in a number of European countries, as well as in Ukraine and Kazakhstan (among the Commonwealth of Independent States; the issue of having such a law in Russia is also being discussed.

Dallakyan says that in Australia, for example, a special tax is paid on luxury vehicles (33 percent of a car’s price).

“By the way, ‘luxury’ is considered to be those cars which cost more than $57,000; and in the streets of Yerevan you encounter vehicles which cost above $100,000 almost everywhere. If they want to enjoy, let them pay,” Dallakyan told ArmeniaNow.

Vahan Hovhannisyan, NA deputy from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Dashnaktsutyun, voiced the necessity of having such a law last month, when the draft law on eight new types of taxes being submitted by the Government, was being discussed. Former NA Speaker Hovhannisyan, criticizing the new types of taxes, said that it would be better if a law on ‘luxury tax’ is adopted instead.

“If you want to drive a ‘Maybach’ or a ‘Rolls-Royce’ by all means, drive it, but pay the State taxes for it,” Hovhannisyan stated.

The members of the parliamentary coalition, some of whom are among the countries’ wealthiest, would be affected by such a tax. Some among that group refused to comment to ArmeniaNow, saying they had not read the draft yet. Only noted businessman Lyova Khachatryan said of the draft: “it is funny.”