February 27, 2017, 00:16 / Business

How to fashionably avoid taxes

The Federal Tax Service assessed additional taxes to Lamoda and Yandex for inflating advertising costs Natalya Ishchenko

The Federal Tax Service assessed hundreds of millions of additional taxes to the online retailer Lamoda and Yandex / E. Razumny / Vedomosti

The third largest online seller of clothes and shoes in RuNet, Lamoda, has been trying to challenge additional taxes and a fine of 134 million rubles since last fall. As the tax authorities discovered and the court agreed, for 2011–2012. The retailer's Russian operating company, Kupishoes LLC, used the front advertising firm Edfoyu Agency to inflate expenses. In two years, its turnover amounted to almost 900 million rubles. with a total loss of Kupishuza of 1.46 billion rubles, follows from the October decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court. On February 1, the Ninth Court of Appeal supported the conclusions of the tax authorities.

The founder of the Edfoyu Agency stated that he registered the company at the request of Kupishuz, and its two general directors testified that they had nothing to do with the agency’s activities. At the same time, settlements were carried out with companies that had signs of shell companies, according to court materials.

The press service of the Federal Tax Service declined to comment.

“Our company has always complied with laws, including tax laws, in all countries where it has done business,” says a Lamoda representative. “The company will take all necessary legal actions to protect its rights and accepts the final decisions of higher courts.” A similar statement was made by a representative of one of the project’s co-investors, Kinnevik Torun Litzen. His colleague from Rocket Internet declined to comment. Representatives of the remaining partners - Summit Partners, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Tengelmann Ventures, Verlinvest - did not respond to Vedomosti's requests.

It's a small matter

The described schemes for withdrawing money or saving on taxes are sometimes used in the work of small advertising agencies, says a top manager of one of the agencies. At the same time, clients and advertisers may not know about the schemes, but there are cases when agencies themselves offer partners to save on taxes, says a top manager of another advertising agency.

This type of scheme is not unique. Similar claims were made even to Yandex. Based on the results of the audit for 2010–2012. The Federal Tax Service added almost 200 million rubles to the search engine. and has already won the courts in two instances. Tax officials, as an official close to the Federal Tax Service told Vedomosti, discovered three fly-by-night companies - customer attraction centers to which Yandex wrote off its expenses. The centers were supposed to provide services to attract partners of the Yandex advertising network.

All three companies did not have qualified personnel on staff, and their managers or founders were nominal, it follows from court documents. For example, the general director of Atlantic LLC from 2009 to August 2014 was Dmitry Meksh, who died at the end of 2012.

A Yandex representative insists that all partner service centers are “real existing businesses.” The provision of services on the Internet “cannot always be confirmed by traditional methods,” says a representative of the search engine: “When analyzing such activities, it is necessary to understand and take into account the technical specifics.” On February 22, according to a Yandex representative, the company filed a cassation appeal. At the same time, the search engine has already paid additional taxes, he added.

Advertising expenses have always been closely studied by the tax service, since through them unscrupulous companies can actually “optimize” taxes, notes Dmitry Kostalgin, managing partner of Taxadvisor. But specific circumstances must be taken into account, he points out. In addition, over the past two years, courts have almost never reflected the position of taxpayers, and this makes it very difficult to challenge such claims, the expert says. In addition, it turns out that “it is easier for the tax authorities to get the tax paid from a bona fide payer, although, in fact, he is the victim in such a situation,” Kostalgin argues.

Ekaterina Bryzgalova participated in the preparation of the article