Sergey Khestanov: Cryptonologists and their consequences

Sergey Hestanov Tax Inspectorate for the work of AGN "Moscow" / Photo: Zykov Kirill

How exactly Russians can pay taxes on cryptocurrencies, the Ministry of Finance of Russia explained. The letter, which sets out the position of the department, is not a normative nature, but allows those who wish to receive information on this issue, the newspaper " Vedomosti " explains.

In fact, according to the Ministry of Finance, citizens can pay taxes on cryptocurrencies in the same way as when selling ordinary property, the publication notes . There is no special procedure for the collection of personal income tax on the sale of bitcoins yet, the director of the tax department of the Ministry of Finance Alexei Sazanov admitted in a letter. This means that in this case the general rules for paying taxes from the sale of property apply.

Some market players have already evaluated their tax risks in approximately the same way, the same newspaper claims in another article, referring to the words of the partner of the law firm Buzko and partners, Roman Buzko. At the same time, the expert interviewed by the publication clarified that although Russians can formally decide for themselves whether to be guided by the explanations of the Ministry of Finance or not, in fact, all the participants in the cryptocurrency market are already aware that the personal income tax with income from transactions with cryptocurrencies will have to be paid.

According to Buzko, the letter primarily answers questions about mining taxation, that is, cryptocurrency mining, and suggests that the income of an individual from this process should be taxed as a benefit in kind. “In general, the position of the Ministry of Finance was not a surprise,” the lawyer emphasized.

However, for many, the question of cryptoaluts and their status remains unclear, especially since the Bank of Russia has not even determined what exactly to be considered cryptocurrency. It is known that he plans to do this only in 2018. In addition, if we talk about taxation on mining, it is also known that the Institute for Growth Economics named after P.A. Stolypin and the Presidential Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs Boris Titov made a proposal not to tax the production of cryptocurrencies.

Work in the office / pixabay.com

The explanations of the Ministry of Finance mean, what consequences they can have and why, with Polit.ru, Sergey Kheestanov talked, associate professor of the department of stock markets and financial engineering of the Faculty of Finance and Banking of the RANEPA, adviser to the macroeconomics of the general director of the Otkritie Broker company. In his opinion, neither to stimulate, nor to recapture from anyone a desire to engage in mining the fact of expressing the Ministry of Finance of his opinion on the question of taxing the receipt of cryptocurrencies-due to objectively existing reasons.

“In the near future, this will not have any significant consequences. They will not be simply due to the fact that there is no mechanism by which the process could be controlled.

It is known that it is one thing - the adoption of a certain law, a normative act, another is a whole set of by -laws that regulate, how exactly this law will work, and the third is law enforcement practice, that is, a whole range of data on how this actually works. And here it is very appropriate to quote the immortal words of Saltykov-Shchedrin that the severity of Russian laws is compensated by the optionality of their implementation.

Well, at present, there is no mechanism that allows you to control the taxation of mining, to check or at least perform it, does not exist. And, as a result, the law on the production of cryptocurrency, being adopted, will not begin to work in the foreseeable future. And the explanations of the Ministry of Finance, set forth in the letter, are completely neutral: this is not a normative act, just the position of the ministry, which is completely unclear how it will work in practice.

As experience shows, most likely it will not work. Accordingly, this will not affect anyone. There should be quite a lot of time before the state learns to control the scope of cryptocurrencies and levy taxes for their receipt. In the meantime, this is all a solution that has no special consequences.

Does anything mean the fact that the Ministry of Finance spoke about mining tax? Rather, this is only a small step towards the introduction of this asset in the right field. But, as western experience shows, including, to get in this direction, you need a rather large distance, and so far the Ministry of Finance does not even know where he eventually wants to come. Therefore, you should not perceive this explanation in the letter as something too serious, ”said Sergey Khestanov.

Commenting on the newspaper’s allegations that, before writing with the explanatory of the Ministry of Finance, people came to tax inspectorates with the desire to pay mining tax, but did not know how to make and actually fulfill their duty, the expert expressed the conviction that there was no reason not only to consider that there were many such people, but it was impossible to even approximately assess the number of those Russians who are engaged in mining.

Cryptocurrency production farm / Flickr.com

“I think there were few people who really want to pay mining tax. Rather, people simply wanted to get some legalization of the legal form of such an unusual asset as cryptocurrency. Perhaps these were simply the conscious actions of one of the activists, the purpose of which was to push our ministries and departments to start work to legalize this asset. But, again, since the controls are completely undeveloped, it is still very early to worry about this topic. Most likely, at least one, or even two five -year planes, should go through before our department learns to work with this.

I would say that so far all these clarifications are not even preparatory in nature, but represent the ministry spontaneous reaction to an unusual request. So all the explanations in the letter of the representative of the Ministry of Finance can not yet affect anything even purely theoretically.

In order for some law to work, it is necessary that the state has means and methods of control and the experience of their application. There is neither the first nor the second yet. I must say more: taking into account the fact that the developers of tools for mining and the use of cryptocurrencies took measures to make it difficult to identify, then if a person who is busy does not make gross errors, it is difficult to identify in principle. That is, even to find out how many people are engaged in mining is more than difficult. If a person who does this accepts reasonable precautions, there are no ways to identify it.

So the number of those involved in mining is difficult to assess even at least approximately, since people themselves are not interested in advertising their lesson, and there are no means of control even in theory. Therefore, I say that the explanation of the Ministry of Finance regarding the taxes on cryptocurrencies is absolutely neutral information, ”explained Sergei Khestestanov.

See also: the Central Bank promised to determine the concept of cryptocurrencies and ICO in the first half of 2018, the Ministry of Finance overlaid the transactions with cryptocurrency the business ombudsman urged not to overlap the production of cryptocurrencies with taxes