The election news here and there won't prevent me from reporting what's going on in Iran these days. Apparently, for the past 8 days many shops, jewelery stores and gold markets across the cities of Isfahan and Tehran have been shut down. The owners and merchants have been on strike ever since. The reason, as I understand, is the new imposed taxes on the industry that is already devastated by the poor economy and government interventions. No one likes tax hikes, even in Iran. Plus the current inflation rate in Iran is around 28% and despite higher oil prices, many retirees and government employees have not received their salaries or pensions and therefore people's power to purchase/shop has been declined sharply. These new tax hikes will definitely kill these struggling businesses and will reduce the purchasing power of the Iranians even more.
Updated I: AFP has a new report on this.
Updated II: BBC Persian service reports that the government backed down on this new imposed taxes and halted the process. Another victory for the Iranian people. Any thing can happen if they're united.
2 comments:
Thanks for reporting. We don't hear about this in the mainstream media
Makes you wonder when Iranians will see any benefit to their lives from all this oil income.
Wouldn't be surprised if the new VAT taxes won't be shippe dto Hezbollah and HAMAS
Post a Comment