A common occurrence when visiting the doctor is their refusal to accept any form of payment other than cash. Refusing debit cards which is on the rise has only one purpose: tax evasion.
Ghanoon writes: “Half of the doctors in Tehran do not pay taxes.”
“From nearly 20 thousand medical practices in Tehran, only 11 thousand had filed taxes last year with the average declaration being 57 million IRR. Based on investigations, the Taxation Organization has calculated this average to be 140 million IRR.” Mohammadreza Nouri, Director of Tehran Tax Affairs told Ghanoon.
In other words, doctors should pay 2.5 times more taxes. In the case of very high earning doctors, these numbers are even greater. Mr. Nouri said: “The average tax declaration for high earning doctors is around 170 million IRR while it should be closer to 760 million IRR.”
Kamel Taghavinejad, Head of Iran Taxation Organization has said that doctors as well as steel and gold traders are the largest groups of tax evaders. Based on statistics from the Taxation Organization, in 1395 (2016-2017), Iranian doctors evaded paying 300 trillion IRR which equals to 8.3 billion USD when considering the exchange rate at the time. Iran’s income from the sale of oil was 41 billion dollars in 2016.