Press TV - The governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) says reports that interest income would be taxable in the next Iranian calendar year are pure media speculations.  

Abdolnasser Hemmati said on Thursday that the Iranian government had no plan at all to tax the income earned from interest accrued on bank deposits.

“Taxation of interest of saving accounts is absolutely untrue,” said Hemmati, adding that the government had no plans to impose such a tax in the future.

The comments came a day after Iran’s minister of finance also rejected reports that the government was seeking to gain between $1.7 to $2.7 billion in new tax incomes form a scheme that obliges the bank to deduct a share of a the interest accrued on the deposits and transfer it to the government accounts.

Farhad Dejpassand said that a new law on direct tax which has yet to be ratified by the government and the parliament had not discussed charging a tax on the interests.

In a Wednesday report, Iran’s semi-official Fars News agency, which normally opposes the government’s monetary and economic polices, published a draft document of the law on direct taxes which showed that the government was planning to deduct up to 60 percent of the interest earned from bank deposits.

According to the document, even deposits with maturity date of more than a year would be eligible to a tax of 20 percent.

Banks in Iran pay some of the highest rates of interest in the world with some financial institutions not regulated by the CBI paying more than 25 percent to savings that mature after a year.