"Gathering a thread": for whom the government will increase taxes in a crisis

The government approved not only the first radical budget reductions in five years, but also the program of "mobilization of income" - that is, we will call a spade a spade, new taxes. They should cover trillion expenses to combat coronacials and losses from falling oil prices. The main victims are large business and Russians with relatively high incomes. This approach to the redistribution of income will remain after the crisis.

Who will pay

The income mobilization program for 1.8 trillion rubles on the environment for the next three years should cover almost half the costs of combating the consequences of the pandemic, which are estimated at 4 trillion rubles. The name "mobilization of income" should not deceive: we are talking about packed in different forms of increasing taxes for citizens and business.

The “mobilization” program can be applied with the same success that the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov used on the same day, describing the process of reducing budget expenditures for 2021–2023: “They collected a thread from all measures”. The old measures announced by Vladimir Putin at the very beginning of the pandemic, such as personal income tax for owners of deposits from 1 million rubles, and new ones, invented specifically for plugging holes in the budget, for example, increasing NPI by 3.5 times for chemists and metallurgists.

Old

In 2020, Vladimir Putin prononized the first new taxes in the spring - immediately after the beginning of the pandemic.

• The introduction from January 1, 2021 of an income tax on interest on deposits or bonds worth more than 1 million rubles. It will not work to crush deposits - the tax will be charged if the amounts of 1 million rubles reach the total accumulation of a person in all banks. Vladimir Putin announced this tax in the first “coronaviral” appeal to the Russians on March 25. According to Forbes, the new tax will give the budget about 100 billion rubles a year.
• The growth of taxes on dividends and interest from 0-5% to 15% for offshore owners. Putin also announced on him on March 25. Since then, Russia has already re -signed on new conditions tax agreements with Cyprus and Malta. The “Mobilization Program” for the first time indicates how much this measure should bring to the budget - 139.7 billion rubles only in 2021.
• Increasing personal income tax from 13% to 15% for Russians in total 5 million rubles per year. It is precisely the “excess”, and not all income of those who fell under the article, will be taxed at an increased rate. Putin proposed this already on June 23, when he announced the victory over the coronavirus.

New

On September 16, the Ministry of Finance developed three more new taxes to the budget hearings on September 16 - two for raw materials and industrial companies and one for smokers.

• The modification of the tax parameters for additional income (EU) and part of the benefits in the oil and gas sector should bring to the budget an additional 290 billion rubles a year. Formally, Rosneft will pay the most, but it will be able to compensate for the losses at the expense of other benefits, and Tatneft and the private “LUKOIL” will become the main victims, analysts for Forbes counted .
• An increase in the tax rate on mining (NDPI) for the main products of metallurgical and chemical companies will give about 56 billion rubles a year 3.5 times. The raw materials companies “in shock and are on your ears” and recall the proposals of the two-year ago the first deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov about the removal of super-profits from metallurgists and chemists. True, a source familiar with the course of discussing the project told The Bell that Belousov did not participate in the development of NPI increase - and the idea was not discussed not only with business, but did not go beyond the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economy at all.
• Finally, another 70 billion rubles a year will bring the largest increase in the excise tax on tobacco products by 20%, from which tobacco companies are trying unsuccessfully.

Who will suffer

In addition to oil companies, Russians with high incomes will become affected by the current redistribution of funds in the Russian economy. But they will include not only those whom we are accustomed without reservation to be considered rich - people with an income of more than 5 million rubles a year, that is, a salary of 412 thousand rubles a month - but also deposits owners from 1 million rubles. “The deposits tax will hit everyone who has deposits. Just for those who have relatively low incomes, it will be more noticeable, ”says Alexander Suslin, head of the fiscal policy department.

The people who fall under this tax are not so few as Vladimir Putin believes, who said that he would affect only 1% of bank depositors. In reality, the amount of 1 million rubles at that time exceeded 55% of the deposits of Russians - and this is not to mention the fact that the tax will be calculated not by the size of individual deposits, but by the amount of all. The richest Russians will not fall under this tax at all, the interlocutor The Bell, participating in the discussion of the plan for the development of the economy in the government, is sure-truly wealthy people simply do not store money in Russian banks.

Is it possible to name people who fall under new taxes, the middle class depends on the definition of - there are no clear criteria, and the assessment methods diverge. For some, it turns out that the middle class in Russia is 4%, in others-70%, the economists of Alfa Bank wrote . Among the adherents of the latest version are Vladimir Putin, who reckoned with the middle class of those whose income is one and a half times higher than the minimum wage - that is, more than 17 thousand rubles per month.

Alfa-Bank economists have a different assessment: they consider the middle class of those whose income is from 26.4 to 53 thousand rubles, says the chief economist of the bank Natalia Orlova. According to her, approximately 65% ​​of this middle class of savings at the level of 10% of the annual disposable income - this is far from 1 million rubles. It turns out that most of the victims of new taxes do not go among the middle class either according to the Putin methodology or by the Alfa Bank method-but, for example, for Moscow with an average salary of 96 thousand rubles and a median 66 thousand rubles, these methods do not work.

More certainty with the affected by increasing personal income tax to 15%. They will relate to the group of the most wealthy Russians, says Natalia Orlova, chief economist of Alfa Bank. Rosstat divides the entire population into 10 decal (that is, 1/10) groups in terms of income, the first with the lowest, the latter with the highest. Most of the population (23.7%) belongs to the sixth group with income from 27 to 45 thousand rubles per month. The group with the highest income (from 100 thousand rubles) includes 3.4% of Russians, but they receive more than 30% of the total amount of cash income in the country - and this makes it the most attractive addressee of new taxes. Those who receive more than 5 million per year - about 0.3-0.4% of all employees, or less than 300 thousand people, follows from the Rosstat data.

Why exactly and what will happen next

The logic of the government’s actions in the crisis was exhaustively described by Vladimir Putin at the very beginning of the pandemic. “We need additional steps, primarily to ensure the social protection of citizens, the preservation of their income and jobs, as well as support for small and medium -sized businesses,” he said in an appeal to the Russians on March 25.

In full accordance with this indication, the lion's part of the government’s anti -crisis money went to small and medium -sized enterprises (SMEs) and socially unprotected citizens. And the main victims of new taxes, as can be seen from the "mobilization program", were large companies and Russians with relatively high income.

This approach applies not only to financing that arose due to the crisis of the budget deficit. The rates of insurance premiums for small and medium -sized businesses are reduced from 30% to 15% not by the crisis, but forever, Vladimir Putin emphasized in the appeal of March 25. And Mikhail Mishustin, telling a week later the government on the new interest on interest on deposits, directly said that "it is not about the current economic situation, but about the need to ensure the stability of the financial, economic, budget system of the country in the long term."

In this context, the most alarming innovation was the increase in personal income tax - the first step over 20 Putin years to turn the flat taxation scale into a progressive one.

The proposal from the very beginning seemed rather symbolic. It will barely notice those who have to pay increased tax, and for the budget an extra 60 billion rubles are not so many. But it shows: a public agreement that has been operating for 20 years can now be revised-“this opens the Pandora box,” said Andrey Sharonov, the head of the Skolkovo business school, who at the time of the transition to a flat scale, the post of deputy minister of economics.

The economic block of the government is well aware that the possibility of increasing taxes is not unlimited, says the source of The Bell, participating in government discussions about the development of the economy and national projects. Personally, he believes that there will be no new increase in taxes in the near future-rather, the government will look for how to increase tax collection or “optimize” some benefits. But the need for a new redistribution of money can be affected quickly - as Rosstat reported today, only in the second quarter the number of Russians behind the poverty line increased by 1.3 million people - and the crisis is still far from the end.

What am I to me?

The idea of ​​raising taxes in a crisis, and even for a solvent population, which could disperse internal demand, many economists seems conventional. But it is quite fading into the ideology of the development of our economy, according to a participant in the discussion of the plan for the development of the economy in the government. “She is this:“ Let's spend state departments and start economic growth. ” There is no emphasis on entrepreneurship, the release of creative potential - those who make decisions are in general in another coordinate system, ”he says.