L ast week, the “Tax System in a Healthy Economy” conference was held at Best Western Tuushin Hotel to address the revision of Mongolia’s tax system. The meeting's participants highlighted that the main step toward making the nation’s economy healthy was tax registration. Mongolia started implementing the value added tax (VAT) refund system this year. Head of the Customs and Taxation Department (CTD) S.Purev emphasized that Mongolia has made a big change to improve the nation’s financial and registration system through the tax refund system. “We are making healthy the nation’s finance and registration system through the VAT refund system. By improving the registration system, Mongolia’s economy will gradually become healthy.” As of today, nearly 700,000 families and entities have opened VAT refund accounts. The CTD calculates that over two million people use the VAT refund system, and over 120,000 people have became winners in the VAT lotteries that have taken place so far. The CTD said that citizens have complained that when they become winners in the VAT lottery they are required to bring in their printed receipts to verify their win, which can be a challenge for some. In response to complaints, the CTD says it is working to introduce a paperless receipt system. Representatives from the CTD said that they are testing card technology to improve the tax refund system. It was also reported that the revisions to the tax laws are being discussed by Parliament. Particularly, the Law on Personal Income Tax, Enterprise Income Tax Law, and other tax system laws are being discussed at the parliamentary level. The CTD believes that tax law revisions will ease the pressure put on entities for the reporting and monitoring of taxes, mitigate expenses for business owners, and support the business environment by providing financial incentives. S.Purev said, “Around 34 trillion MNT was made transparent under the Law on Economic Transparency, which was 1.5 times higher than the nation’s total GDP. There are 64,000 entities that generate 80 percent of Mongolia’s state budget income through their tax contributions, which is a big achievement for Mongolia.” The conference took place in the presence of government representatives, authorities of the CTD, and Head of the Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.