VAT resisted

Alexey Kudrin is ready to reduce the value of value added tax (VAT) will not be reduced. Instead, enterprises will receive income tax benefits, and oil workers will receive benefits for mining tax (NDPI). The point in a fierce dispute for the VAT rate set prices and volumes of production of the country's main resource - oil. Their ongoing fall was the main argument against the reduction in VAT.

As the newspaper suggested on Thursday, the Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin chose to agree to a decrease in personal income tax, not VAT. In order for enterprises from other sectors of the economy to not feel infringed, they offered a 30 percent depreciation award, which will reduce the taxable profit of enterprises.

Business is fighting off the Ministry of Finance Control over transfer prices should be applied only to foreign trade operations and entered in two stages: first by exchange transactions, then for all the rest. Members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) came to this decision yesterday. They will set out their position next week in the Ministry of Finance at the next discussion of the bill on transfer pricing. The concept proposed by the Ministry of Finance - control for both foreign trade and internal transactions - does not suit the business. Objections on Thursday were expressed by representatives of fuel, energy, metallurgical and other sectors with vertically integrated companies that will affect new control rules. In their general opinion, if the tax authorities begin to control domestic prices, monitoring the uniformity of the distribution of profit at the points of the industrial complex, this will lead to a shortage of sources to finance long -term investment programs of enterprises and at the same time to eating excess own funds. Therefore, control should only apply to those transactions where there is a risk of profit from the country, that is, to foreign trade. Moreover, the RSPP believes, at the first stage (since 2010), it is necessary to control transactions for the purchase of goods applying on the exchange, the market value of which is known. And on the second (not earlier than 2012) - to introduce control over other transactions. There are a number of goods or services, such as branded, the cost of which cannot be estimated in market prices. The tax authorities will have to take this into account in their audits, members of the RSPP motivate their proposal.

In addition, the government agreed to provide the right to accept VAT on advance payments. “It was decided to postpone the issue of the VAT rate for 2009 in order to weigh everything again, look at the dynamics of events in world markets, at the situation with the price of oil, which is still falling,” said Alexei Kudrin following the meeting of the president on Thursday. There is no clear decision about what benefits that oil workers will receive. "In the near future, a decision will be developed on an additional reduction in the load on the oil sector in order to stimulate oil production," the deputy prime minister said.

One of the alleged options is to increase the non -taxable minimum of personal income tax to $ 25 per barrel. This will give oilmen 400 billion rubles of additional money, which they can direct to the development of production. Deputy Minister of Finance Sergey Shatalov says that the alleviation of the tax burden on the oil sector may be associated with export duties for oil and oil products, which the Ministry of Finance has already reduced on Thursday (see p. 12). The future of a single social tax (USN) is still unclear, but the Ministry of Finance promises to decide it in the near future: recall that the agency offers to index the tax scale and increase its rate to 29%.

The business took differently a decision made on VAT. “We still believe that a decrease in VAT is possible and necessary. But in today's situation, the government’s decision can be called wise. It will be difficult to compensate for an economically balanced - drop -down income in the conditions of a decreasing price of oil and falling oil production. Refusing to reduce VAT rate, the state gave business benefits that have no less stimulating effect,” says deputy chairman of the tax. Committee of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) Andrei Tikhonovsky. The chairman of the "Business Russia" Boris Titov called the decision a great disappointment. "In 2009, the situation will no longer be as favorable as it is now. The refusal to reduce the VAT rate can lead to a loss to 40% of processing enterprises," says Boris Titov. Small business is not so pessimistic. “You can live at such a rate of VAT, it is much more important that it is competently administered,” said Sergey Borisov, President of the Rossiya Russia.

The alternatives proposed by the business to reduce VAT cannot be called unwanted: the enterprises achieved them for a long time. However, the largest category - average business - still believes that they do not compensate for the preservation of the VAT rate at the same level. "Yes, the decision to reduce VAT was postponed for a year. But the position of the Ministry of Finance remains unchanged - not to reduce," the newspaper Deputy Minister of Finance Sergey Shatalov told the correspondent.

09/18/2008 / Ksenia Batanova, the material was published in the newspaper No. 178 of 09/19/2008.