Moscow, February 17. The Russian government has reached an agreement with the country’s businessmen to make an additional contribution to the state budget through fiscal instruments, which is running a deficit after significantly increasing spending in January in the framework of the military campaign in Ukraine.
“We have reached an agreement that special amendments to tax legislation will be drafted and, most likely, the contribution (from companies) will be in the form of taxes on the increase in financial results in recent years,” did he declare. Minister Anton Siluanov on the Rossia 24 channel.
The government’s search for additional revenue intensified after a budget deficit of 1.76 trillion rubles (about $24 trillion) was recorded in the first month of the year, representing 60% from that projected for the whole of 2023, attributed to the expenses of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Andrei Belousov said a “voluntary payment” to the budget was being negotiated with businessmen due to the extraordinary profits achieved in 2022.
The president of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Russia (UIER), Alexandr Shojin, estimated at the time between 200,000 and 250,000 million rubles (respectively 2,700 and 3,400 million dollars) the voluntary contribution requested by the ‘executive.
However, Shojin warned that the voluntary nature of the payment would be hampered by company procedures, so the UIER preferred that tax mechanisms be used.
The Minister of Finance today estimated about 300,000 million rubles (about $4,000 million) the additional contribution of big business to the budget.
He clarified that the measure will not be extended to small businesses or the oil and gas industry.
According to Rosstat, the national statistics agency, in the first half of 2022, companies obtained a consolidated profit of 16.6 trillion rubles (about 225,000 million dollars), which is 32% more than in the same period of the previous year. . EFE
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