Overview of tax events for February 2024

Regulatory Developments

The Russian President has outlined tax initiatives for the Federal Assembly ( video).

The State Duma has passed in the first reading draft laws (Nos. 518787-8 and 518779-8 initiated by a group of Duma Members) concerning the creation of international advanced development areas (IADAs) and tax benefits for residents of the Far Eastern Federal District.

The Russian Government has:

• put before the State Duma a draft law (No. 558768-8), which will simplify the procedure for obtaining documentary confirmation of the 0% VAT rate;

• approved to be put before the State Duma a draft law that is aimed at creating a mechanism for collecting VAT taking into account destination countries of goods that are sold through electronic trading platforms.

The Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Finance Alexey Sazanov has announced that the Ministry of Finance has invited certain states of the Persian Gulf to begin negotiations to make adjustments to DTTs.

The political party United Russia has prepared a set of draft laws that will regulate different aspects of food-sharing in Russia (this set has been sent to the Russian Government).

Practice

More than 1 million companies and almost 11 million individuals no longer have tax arrears owing to the introduction of the unified tax account. The number of wrongfully made payments has reduced by 22.8 times owing to procedures being simplified and pro-client technologies being introduced, Deputy Head of the Russian Federal Tax Service Konstantin Chekmyshev has said. The number of payments has also reduced, by 1.7 times. The number of measures to recover taxes has become 3 times less.

Since the end of 2023, tax authorities have increased control over full-time employees being registered as self-employed individuals to reduce taxes.

The Russian Federal Tax Service:

• has instructed lower tax authorities to report debtors whose tax arrears exceed RUB 50 million;

• has issued a reminder that, starting from 1 March 2024, authorised representatives of certain categories of taxpayers must use only electronic powers of attorney when they submit tax returns (or calculations) to tax authorities.

Russia has proposed including in the matters covered by the future UN framework convention on tax matters items connected with the creation under the auspices of the UN of an alternative platform for exchanging tax information and the creation of a global database for determining the status of tax residency (a message on the website of the Russian Ministry of Finance).