Duties of contention

“Russian Post” asked the Government of the Russian Federation to transfer a decrease in the duty-free threshold for parcels from foreign online stores from € 1000 to € 200 at the beginning of 2021, but Akit and the Ministry of Finance against.

The Director General of the Russian Post Nikolai Podguzov asked Vice Prime Minister Maxim Akimov to transfer the decrease in the threshold of duty-free import of goods from foreign online stores to € 200 from 2019 for 2021. Now the Ministry of Finance project implies a decrease in the duty-free threshold to € 500 from July 1, 2018 to € 200 from January 1, 2019.

Internet trade is a promising market for Russian Post: its income from services to companies in this area in 2017 amounted to 48 billion rubles, or 30% of the revenue, and the share in the cross-border market-97%. “Russian Post” also implements a project with VTB to create 40 logistics distribution centers for 35 billion rubles. The decrease in the revenue of FSUP from the parcels can lead to the stop of the project with VTB, Nikolai Podguzov fears.

He also reminded the government of the negative experience of reducing the duty -free threshold in other countries. So, at the beginning of 2018, in Sweden, exemption from VAT for foreign Internet purchases was canceled, which led to the refusal of the ordered goods, and this, in turn, led to overstocking of warehouses and an increase in the expenditure of the postal operator, which should pay for return departments. A similar situation occurred in Belarus.

The head of the Russian Post also notes that a decrease in the limit of duty -free import without changing the technology of charging duties paralyzes the customs clearance procedure in the organization. At the same time, the Russian Post creates similar technologies for implementation, but so far they have not been tested and the organization does not have a corresponding permission from the Ministry of Finance.

The concern of the head of the Russian Post is also caused by the fact that the limit of € 200 is planned to be entered not on one parcel, but to all departments within a month. “This can lead to the fact that the flow of international parcels will be redistributed to countries with more favorable conditions - for example, from Russia to Kazakhstan. Thus, the country will not reach a fiscal goal and suffer tangible losses, ”says a source familiar with the document. This is the “most critical” moment, the top manager of a large company in the Russian E-Commerce market agrees. “The only way to control this is the identification of the buyer according to passport data. But then the truth is all traffic to leaks in friendly Kazakhstan and Belarus, ”he said.

According to the President of the National Association of Remote Trade (NadT) Alexander Ivanov, there is not a single country in the world that would not receive a loss in the administration of cross -border trade. “There are no prerequisites for the fact that we can get something else. Moreover, as the trade flow increases, the budget losses will also grow, ”he said.

However, part of Russian companies involved in Internet trade, on the contrary, continue to insist on the rapid introduction of the limit.

President of the Association of Internet trade companies Artem Sokolov, who put a lot of effort to pushing quite doubtful, lobbying laws (“Google tax”, the introduction of VAT for foreign online stores), supports the position of the Ministry of Finance, which does not see the risk for the emergence of vagnations at the Russian Post: “It is very strange that the largest logistics operator is not able to process less 4.8% of orders from the total flow - this is the number of orders at the cost of the cost of € 150. " Now, in this whole story, according to Mr. Sokolov, only one lost party is Russian companies that “still pay billions of taxes of taxes to the budget, unlike their foreign competitors”.

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