Taxes have come out of the crisis

Fiscal collections in January-February exceeded those of the beginning of the “fat” year of 2008

In January-February 2010, the Federal Tax Service (FTS) collected an amount for budgets of all levels that was 2.6% less than in the same period last year, which was disastrous for the economy. True, without taking into account the unified social tax (UST), which since 2010 has turned into “non-tax” insurance contributions to social insurance funds. Taking into account these contributions in absolute numbers, the fiscal burden on the economy in the first two months increased by 23% and exceeded the pre-crisis level of 2008 by 7.4%.

The Federal Tax Service reported last Friday on the receipt of taxes and fees in the consolidated budget system of Russia for the first two months of this year. Budgets of all levels were replenished by 1049.2 billion rubles, which is 2.6% less than a year ago. At first glance, this is strange, since the period of gradual economic recovery is compared with the peak of the crisis, when tax revenues fell by 12.8% compared to the beginning of the “fat” year of 2008. More precisely, only the first half of it was “fat,” but this is evidenced by the comparative fiscal statistics of January-February.

But in fact, tax revenues themselves in 2010 increased by 13.4% compared to last year. The “losses” occurred due to a sharp (three-fold) reduction in revenues from extra-budgetary funds - pension, social and health insurance. And this has nothing to do with the economic crisis. From January 1, 2010, the unified social tax, from which these funds were filled, was eliminated, and funds are received directly in them in the form of insurance contributions, bypassing the Federal Tax Service. Those amounts for unified social tax and fees to extra-budgetary funds that tax authorities continue to report are debts of companies for the past year. Their size in the coming months will be close to zero.

The Ministry of Health and Social Development promises to report on how insurance premiums are being collected no earlier than April-May. However, according to data released in early March by the head of the Pension Fund, Anton Drozdov, the Pension Fund directly collected 213 billion rubles for itself in two months of this year. Which, as the chairman of the board of the Pension Fund assured, exceeded the planned indicators by 2%. If we assume that all companies that transferred money to the Pension Fund also made payments to the social and compulsory health insurance funds, this is another 64 billion in insurance contributions. Thus, the total fiscal burden on the economy can be increased by 277 billion rubles, to 1326 billion. And this is already 23% more than the Federal Tax Service collected in January-February 2009.

Even adjusted for inflation, which, according to Rosstat, was 7.2% in February 2010 compared to February 2009, fees from companies increased by almost 16%. And in absolute numbers, they exceeded the collections of the first two months of 2008 (at that time 1,235 billion rubles were transferred to the Federal Tax Service) by 7.4%.

The crisis, of course, is still being felt by tax authorities. Income tax collections decreased by 19.4%, and a significant role in this was played not only by the reduction in the rate of this tax by 4 percentage points since 2009. Value added tax collections increased by only 12.7%, which, taking into account inflation, slightly exceeds the figure for the disastrous beginning of last year for the industry. Personal income tax collections increased by only 5.3% in absolute figures. But excise tax collections increased by 37% and mineral extraction tax (MET) by 87%. The significant increase in treasury revenues from excise taxes is explained by an increase in a number of their rates since 2010. And the mineral extraction tax increased as world oil prices recovered, but has not yet been able to reach the level of early 2008, when it cost from 85 to 100 dollars per barrel.

Federal Tax Service data for the first two months of 2010 show that the redistribution of tax revenues from excise taxes and mineral extraction tax carried out last year between the federal and local levels clearly occurred in favor of the federal center. Revenues to the consolidated budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation increased in January-February by 5.9%, to 403.1 billion rubles, and the federal budget collected more by 19.4% - 573.8 billion rubles. The federal budget received 77% more excise taxes than in January-February 2009 (19.2 billion rubles), while the budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation received only 26% more (49.7 billion rubles). Mineral extraction tax collections to the federal budget increased by 97.5%, to 223.8 billion rubles, and to the consolidated budget of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation decreased by 52.9%, to 4 billion rubles.

Andrey SUSAROV