Today about 200 local businessmen got together near the building of Tax committee to protest against the new “super-patent”(rus) (permit for business activity). Wow! That’s interesting. This reform was initiated by International Financial Corporation. This is also interesting. However this initiative was for good but presented to local businessmen as an evil. Funny.

According to the new reforms, the “super-patent” merges three types of taxes ? value added tax (13%), social tax (0,2%), and the retail sales tax (3%) into one fixed payment.

According to the old Tax code of Tajikistan, besides paying for the patent businessmen had to pay also the social tax and the retail sales tax separately. This made the businessmen get in contact with governmental officials more often, but the new amendments related to “super-patent” decreases the number of direct contacts with officials, which reduces the level of corruption.

Everything is simple. However, it comes out that people didn’t know that the new “super-patent” was introduce with a purpose to ease their burden. People were courageous enough today to protest near the building of Tax committee. But I have doubts that it was against the governmental structures. May be people were brave enough to protest because they knew that it was IFC but not the government who initiated the super-patent?