Denunciation to the treasury

The number of people informing tax authorities in writing about violators of fiscal discipline is constantly growing

Russians continue active correspondence with tax authorities. Often they are driven not by the desire to clarify their tax obligations and rights, but by the desire to inform fiscal officials about facts of tax evasion. They write about acquaintances, neighbors, colleagues and employers. And more and more such letters are being received by the central office of the Federal Tax Service, as evidenced by the statistics published on the official website of the Federal Tax Service.

In particular, in November, almost 600 people wrote epistolary messages to the central office of the Federal Tax Service. Most of the requests concerned payment of income tax . Traditionally, this is the most painful issue for every citizen of any country. The next most popular subject in the letters is disagreements with the territorial bodies of the Federal Tax Service and complaints about violations by tax officials of the procedure for considering a case of an administrative offense. In total, 14% of the total number of letters were written on the topic of taxpayers’ disagreement with the decisions of the tax authorities.

Just as many people write about problems with registering legal entities or individual entrepreneurs. There is a slightly smaller number of voluntary assistants to tax officials who write slander about facts of violation of tax legislation that have become known to them. In absolute terms, this figure is not amazing, but in percentage terms it is 9%.

Moreover, what is important is not even these 9% (less than 60 calls per month), but the fact that the share of such complainants is constantly growing. If at the end of 2004 voluntary tax informants accounted for 6% of the total number of those who sent letters, in 2005 they became 7%, in 2006 - 8%. Those who like to give away other people's secrets complain mainly about retail outlets operating without cash registers, employers paying “black” or “gray” wages, as well as neighbors who rent out housing and do not pay taxes on this type of income. The latter, however, is especially relevant for residents of the Krasnodar Territory, where about 70% of families, to one degree or another, receive income from renting out housing to holidaymakers.

Unlike previous years, many letters came from pensioners who are interested in the procedure for providing a property tax deduction. And although tax officials, together with the Ministry of Finance, have been explaining for many years that only people who have income on which income tax has been paid have the right to deduction, non-working pensioners still regularly raise this issue. Apparently, they hope that something has changed in the legislation in their favor.

But recently, interest in such an issue as assigning a TIN has clearly cooled. If previously some citizens refused to receive an individual taxpayer number for religious reasons, now, apparently, either believers have come to terms with the need to obtain a code from a series of numbers, or accounting departments at work have stopped insisting that employees must obtain the notorious TIN.

Traditionally, there has been an increased interest of citizens in the taxation of small businesses. Most of the requests from entrepreneurs concerned the calculation of the single tax on imputed income in a specific situation. Some requests received by the central office of the Federal Tax Service related to the payment of land taxes, requests to obtain a certificate of absence of tax debt, the use of cash registers, lotteries, and contributions to the Pension Fund. That is, citizens were mainly interested in their “personal” taxes. But one person sent a letter with proposals “for the development of tax reform.” It is curious that, judging by the department’s statistics, tax officials regularly receive such proposals. True, fiscal officials never disclose what exactly they contain.

Irina SKLYAROVA