Androids and referents

Everyone is invited to participate in the competition to identify tax evaders

A bill on the distinction between tax optimization and criminal tax evasion schemes may appear next year. Stanislav Voskresensky, Deputy Head of the Expert Department of the Presidential Administration, announced this at the conference “Conscientious Taxpayer, or the Business Purpose Doctrine in Russia,” organized by the Tax Committee of the Association of European Businesses.

The draft document, which will describe all the signs of tax evaders and their differences from honest “minimizers,” will not be developed behind the scenes, Mr. Voskresensky promised. Currently, according to him, the presidential administration is holding a competition to prepare such a bill. Applications for participation in the competition are accepted until July 1, and bills must be submitted in finished form by October 1. The final text of the document will have to appear after discussing it with the government, in particular with the Ministry of Finance.

Although the conference was devoted to the problem of payer integrity itself, the participants immediately expanded the range of issues. Moreover, at the suggestion of the same Mr. Voskresensky. According to him, officials are working very hard on tax reform, but they have forgotten that the mentality of tax officials has remained at the 1991 level. “Rewriting the legislation will not change them, Russians need to change their psychology, 171 thousand tax workers are our citizens, and not android aliens who have come to destroy our economy,” he said.

“What can we talk about, if up to 60% of the staff in the tax authorities changes every year, all potentially capable employees go to private companies,” agreed with him Sergei Razgulin, a representative of the Ministry of Finance, head of the department for coordination and control over the activities of the Federal Tax Service.

After such a provocative statement, representatives of the Ministry of Finance and the Presidential Administration had to answer rather unpleasant questions from legal practitioners. Why does the Federal Tax Service, being directly subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, issue answers to taxpayers’ questions that are not coordinated with your department, they asked Mr. Razgulin. His recommendations were surprising: you have the right to choose, you have the right to find out the opinion of the tax authorities and, if it suits you, pay taxes in accordance with their position; if not, try to make the same request to the Ministry of Finance.

In fact, an official of the Ministry of Finance admitted that his department is not fully coping with the work assigned to it in monitoring the implementation of tax laws by fiscal officials. “I don’t want to say that this situation is normal, but it is extremely difficult to avoid such problems,” he immediately corrected himself. But where entrepreneurs should look for the truth - in the courts, the Ministry of Finance or tax authorities - the official did not explain. “For example, if in America a person asks a financial consultant whether he can make a transaction about which the law is ambiguous about whether it is legal, the consultant only helps him make a request to the relevant government agency, but we are not in America, where there are clarifications authorities can be used by citizens as a justification for the legality of their activities; in our country, all departmental manuals, explanations, letters and recommendations are recognized as invalid and beyond the scope of legislation,” explained Mr. Ragulin.

But even more surprising was the same Stanislav Voskresensky. When asked whether the president’s recent phrase that tax authorities should not terrorize business would finally lead the discussion about taxpayer integrity into a constructive direction, the administration representative answered quite unexpectedly: “What do you remember about “terrorism”, it was an emotion! The Federal Tax Service was then very offended by us, but we didn’t write these words, honestly, this is a reference,” he assured those gathered. It is unclear, however, whether it will soon turn out that the president’s other “liberal” economic guidelines were just emotions or petty hooliganism of his referees.

Irina SKLYAROVA