Overview of tax events for March 2022

Regulatory developments

The Russian President has:

• signed a set of laws required for carrying out a new stage of the capital amnesty in Russia. For the first time it will extend to cash;

• signed a law that gives power to the federal government and regional governments to change the deadlines for tax payments in the current year;

• signed a law banning the instigation of criminal cases based on tax offences without tax authorities being involved.

The Russian Government has:

• resolved to postpone the deadline for the payment of advance profit tax from 28 March to 28 April;

• reduced payment for water facilities for industrial enterprises.

The legal information portal for discussion has published a draft order to approve requirements for information systems of an organisation that can be accessed by tax authorities.

Practice

On 1 March, Rules for collecting payments for the use of toll roads of national importance and toll portions of such roads have come into force.

• in its Letter No. SD-4-2/3289@ dated 17 March 2022 noted that a legal entity spin-off is not recognised as the segmenting of a business for the use of IT benefits;

• in its Letter No. ShYu-4-13/2724@ dated 5 March 2022 noted that, when tax control of prices is conducted and when applications are examined for pricing agreements to be concluded for tax purposes, account will be taken of the impact on the Russian economy of hostile actions of the US and foreign countries and international organisations that have joined them;

• is issuing a reminder that, starting from 2022, all foreign companies and unincorporated foreign entities must annually file information on their members (founders, beneficial owners and managers) with the tax authority. The exceptions are foreign companies providing services in electronic form;

• is participating in a pilot project involving the sale of debtors’ property ( information source);

• has summed up the results of pre-judicial dispute settlements in 2021;

Daniil Yegorov, head of the Russian Federal Tax Service, has decided to limit until 1 June 2022 the adoption by tax authorities of decisions to suspend transactions on bank accounts when funds are collected from accounts of debtors.

The Federal Tax Service has sent out to its territorial divisions an instruction to restrict the appointment and conduct of audits in relation to compliance with currency legislation.

The Russian Federal Tax Service has adopted a resolution to suspend, starting from 9 March, the initiation of debtor bankruptcy procedures.

Personal accounts of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs have a section titled How the Tax Authority Sees Me where taxpayers can now see information about themselves in the sub-sections Financial and Business Performance Figures and Figures for Partners.

The Federal Tax Service has put into operation on its website an updated version of the service Register of Disqualified Entities.

Participants in tax monitoring will be able to test a scenario of integration with the Nalog-3 Automated Information System.

From now on, apart from a full excerpt from the Unified Register of Companies it will be possible to obtain an excerpt based on pre-determined criteria.

A document may now be converted to a reader-friendly format at no additional cost on the Federal Tax Service’s website.

According to Alexey Sazanov, deputy head of the Russian Finance Ministry, negotiations between Russia and Switzerland on the revision of the double tax treaty have been suspended and there are currently no contacts between the financial authorities of the two countries.

The Russian Federal Tax Service and the Belarusian Ministry for Taxes and Levies have launched an exchange of information about the traceability of goods.

Belarus and Russia will adopt a draft agreement on the unified procedure for collecting indirect taxes.