Tax evaders will be caught abroad

Hiding from taxes will not be possible abroad now. The Ministry of Finance has prepared a number of amendments to the Tax Code, which provides the inspections and search of evaders jointly with foreign colleagues.

Russian tax representatives will be able to go abroad and verify the domestic tax evaders in cooperation with foreign colleagues. At the same time, foreign tax authorities will also have the right to seek their debtors in Russia.

The amendments made will allow the tax authorities to search for defaulters abroad by a number of articles, such as income and individual property tax, profit tax and property of the organizations tax, value-added tax, land, transport, agriculture and water taxes. Excises, tax on the extraction of commercial minerals, tax on gambling industry, tax on payments, which are relying to the budget in case of the simplified taxation system, are also included in the list.

The search of tax evaders will be based on a standard agreement about an exchange of tax information. The agreement was developed by the Ministry of Finance in association with Federal Tax Service. This agreement will form the basis for signing of bilateral arrangements with foreign countries, including offshore and low-tax areas. First of all Russia needs to ratify the Joint Council of Europe/OECD Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which was signed in 2011. Today our country has only the right to accept information from foreign tax authorities, but the Federal Tax Service can’t carry out checks abroad.

In situation, when many states faced the problem of budget shortfalls, such measures can significantly increase the revenue side of the budget. The exact amount which will manage to be returned to the Russian treasury during such “field checks” is difficult to predict. Experts name only hypothetical sums. According to the experts, about 30 billion dollars were brought out of Russia to the Cyprus offshore areas for the last 20 years.

Information agency Credinform offers to get acquainted with its own independent index of reliability, which allows to verify the contractor and to identify the «fly by night» company.