Non-production expenses and non-tax payments of business were discussed at a meeting of the Board of Trustees of OPORA RUSSIA

On November 24, a meeting of the Board of Trustees of OPORA RUSSIA was held under the chairmanship of Sergey Borisov, Honorary President of OPORA RUSSIA, Chairman of the Board of Trustees. The central topic of discussion was non-production expenses (these include, for example, fines) and non-tax payments - contributions, the obligation to pay which is established not by tax, but by other legislation, for example, contributions to the Social Insurance Fund, the Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund and the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, various fees - environmental, resort and etc.

The event was attended by Deputy Minister of Economic Development Tatyana Ilyushnikova, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets Anatoly Artamonov, State Duma deputies Sergei Morozov and Nikolai Nikolaev, President of the RSPP Alexander Shokhin, Head of the CCI Sergei Katyrin, representatives of various business areas and industry unions .

According to the estimates of the President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin, non-tax payments in 2021 amounted to 0.91% of GDP. At the same time, despite the systematization of the list of payments by the Accounts Chamber and the Ministry of Finance of Russia, a full-fledged public register has not appeared, which complicates the assessment of the total fiscal burden of a business, including in the sectoral and regional context.

Sergey Katyrin, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation: “The Ministry of Finance froze the initiative of the working group of entrepreneurs and the Ministry of Economic Development, which prepared the draft law “On the regulation of non-tax payments”, in connection with which a new initiative arose to include certain non-tax payments in the Tax Code. At the same time, the remaining non-tax payments remained in the sectoral legislation and the issue was not resolved with them, many payments remained generally outside the legal framework.

The inclusion of non-tax payments in the Tax Code raises business concerns that it will lead to a significant increase in the fiscal burden on business. At the same time, new payments continue to appear, including payments for the "carbon footprint".

Olga Kalyuzhnaya, President of the Russian Forest Association: “An important problem of non-production business expenses is the disproportionate amount of administrative fines to the consequences of the offense. For example, part 5 of article 8.28.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation may jeopardize the existence of any small timber industry enterprise. It entails the imposition of fines on legal entities up to 700 thousand rubles with the possible confiscation of timber and vehicles. It is necessary to significantly reduce the indicated amounts of fines, distinguishing between deliberate actions of persons aimed at concealing illegally harvested timber from possible errors in the preparation of electronic forms of documentation by conscientious forest users.

The meeting participants proposed to finalize the framework law "On the regulation of non-tax payments", conduct a new inventory of these payments and enter them in a single register. If we are talking about including a number of non-tax payments in the Tax Code, then this idea should be discussed with business only in conjunction with the solution of the problem of non-tax payments in general.