Successfully protected the client in tax proceedings which had continued for almost 5 years and reached the Supreme Court

The team represented JSC Krastsvetmet, which was charged with claims of receiving tax benefit (compensation of VAT). To justify these claims, the tax authority presumed that the taxpayer's supplier had devised a scheme to withdraw gold from precious metal accounts with banks without paying VAT. Previously, these transactions had already been the subject matter of tax control. However, tax claims were not submitted in full to the taxpayer’s contracting party and the banks. In the end, the amount of additional assessments was formed residually: it included everything that had not been claimed against the contracting party and the banks based on the results of the completed audits. At the same time, the tax authority was unable to explain why it had decided not to charge the full amount of claims against the contracting party and the banks.

In the framework of this project, our lawyers prepared objections to the audit report, a complaint to the superior tax authority, an application to invalidate the non-regulatory act and cassation appeals to the circuit court and the Supreme Court. Our lawyers represented the client in courts of all levels. The court proceedings continued for 4 years and 8 months. As a result, we succeeded in proving that the tax authority's claims were unjustified.

The ruling of the Russian Supreme Court's Judicial Board for Economic Disputes in this case has created a precedent. The Board of the Russian Supreme Court has referred to this case three times in its rulings. References to this ruling can be found in more than 300 judicial acts including in 38 resolutions of cassation courts. Additionally, the ruling of the Supreme Court  in the case of JSC Krastsvetmet has been included in an overview of legal positions included in judicial acts of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court on tax matters. The Federal Tax Service has sent it to lower-level tax authorities.