Translated material
Last year's grant issued
The Soros Foundation kept its promise to scientists
The Russian branch of the Soros Foundation, the Open Society Institute, has decided to pay grants to those scientists and teachers to whom they were promised last year. The other day the transfer of funds began again.Let us remind you that the issuance of money to individuals was suspended on January 1 of this year due to the entry into force of the second part of the Tax Code. The fact is that the new legislation introduced a unified social tax, which also began to be levied on money paid under humanitarian programs. And according to the new legislation, the foundation had to pay 35.9% of the amount of all grants to the Russian treasury.
The Soros Foundation did not consider it possible to “donate” almost a third of grants to Russian tax authorities and tried to achieve an exception for charitable organizations. “We wrote to Deputy Minister of Finance Sergei Shatalov and the Ministry of Taxes and Duties,” says Galina Lebedeva, head of the institute’s grant department. — The Duma Committee on Science is also considering our issue. We also negotiated with Valentina Matvienko as part of a meeting of non-profit organizations. Everywhere they said that our demands were quite reasonable. But nothing has changed yet. Therefore, we decided to pay money for last year’s obligations, but the issuance of grants for this year is still blocked.”