Russia passes special tax for companies
Around 17 months after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russian parliament passed a one-time special tax on corporate profits from previous years. “An excess profit tax will be introduced for organizations with an average profit of more than one billion rubles (around ten million euros) in 2021 and 2022,” the Russian State Duma announced on its website on Friday. All in all, the Russian leadership expects the measure to generate extra income of around three billion euros.
According to the draft law, by January 28, 2024, the companies should pay off ten percent of the total profit from the years 2021/22, which was above the average profit for the years 2018/19. This means that the economic slump in the Covid year 2020 is not included in the tax calculation.
Companies that pay by the end of November 2023 will also receive a discount and only have to pay half. Oil, gas and coal companies are not affected by the tax because they are already being asked to pay a higher resource tax.
The special levy is intended to plug holes in the Russian state budget. In the first half of the year, the budget deficit amounted to 2.6 trillion rubles (about 26 billion euros). A deficit of 2.9 trillion rubles (around 29 billion euros) is expected for the year as a whole. According to the Ministry of Finance, the situation has eased somewhat in recent months, after the relationship between income and expenditure was out of balance at the beginning of the year, among other things due to Western sanctions such as the oil price cap. Among other things, expenditure was drastically reduced in June.