How to get paid for foreign projects in Armenia?

Do you cooperate with foreign clients and want to receive payment for orders to the Armenian account? We will tell you why it is better to open an account as an individual entrepreneur, and not as an individual.

You can open an account of an individual (FL) in international currency or get the status of an individual entrepreneur, open an account and issue, if necessary, a card for it.

We recommend choosing the second option. Transfers to the account of individuals have several disadvantages.

1. Paying personal income tax in the RA on income outside the country is not easy (confirmed by those who have lived in the RA all their lives and accountants in the local market), it is not so clear (some types of income simply do not fit into the RA tax code, it needs to be updated)
2. Banks in some countries, when issuing a visa, may require proof of payment of taxes in addition to proof of origin of funds. Here, working as an individual entrepreneur with invoices, TIN immediately known and all receipts to one account will be very useful, but receipts to the FL account, where a lot of other operations are mixed - no
3. In many Armenian banks, you can open an account with a Russian passport. In this case, the residence address is taken from the Russian passport. Some international services and banks are guided by it when approving or refusing a transfer or other transactions.
   For obvious reasons, from 2022, any address of residence in the Russian Federation is toxic. We wrote earlier about how to change the address at the bank. In the case of an individual entrepreneur, the address for opening an account, as a rule, is taken from the registration address, which, for sure, is in the territory of the Republic of Armenia.

Let's compare the opening of an individual entrepreneur and the opening of a foreign currency account FL in four parameters

Parameter	IP account	FL account
The attitude of banks to transactions	Regular international transfers do not raise questions	The account can be quickly blocked due to regular transfers, especially if they are international
taxes	5%1 - income tax, social contributions	20%
residence permit	IP status is the basis for obtaining a residence permit for a year or 5 years	The personal account is not a basis for obtaining a residence permit
Payoneer account2	Open easily	It is very difficult with Russian citizenship, you need to confirm residency in the RA

¹For holders of IT certificates, income tax is 0%, for entrepreneurs with a turnover of more than 115 million drams (290,000 $) - 20%.
²Payoneer is a Mastercard payment system for sending and receiving international payments.

It is worth considering some of the nuances of entrepreneurial activity in Armenia:

1. Accounting is conducted in Armenian in the system arm soft. Therefore, you will need to hire an accountant for reporting
2. Some Russian companies will refuse to work with individual entrepreneurs in the jurisdiction of Armenia. This is due to the complexity of accounting for international transactions in the Russian Federation.
3. We do not recommend using a card issued to an IP account for personal purposes: for subscribing or p2p transactions. It will complicate accounting

After obtaining IP status, you need to go to one of the banks. Each of them has its own requirements for documents for opening an IP account, so we publish the most complete list of documents:

1. RF passport
2. Notarized translation of passport copy
3. IP registration certificate
4. Apartment rental agreement by the founder of the IP for at least 6 months
5. social card

Consideration of documents takes 5-7 working days. After approval, you will get access to the account, as well as the ability to issue a bank card.

 

If you work on a freelance exchange or with international customers, apply for the status of an individual entrepreneur and open an IP account.