Amendments to the Law «On financial accounts»

The Federal Law of 28.11.2018 №444-FL «On Amendments to the Federal Law «On financial accounts» have come into force, aiming at alleviation of presenting accounting statements by organizations to the state authorities.

According to the amendments, the State information resource of accounting (financial) statements will be organized in Russia. The Federal Tax Service (FTS RF) is authorized to maintain the resource.

Beginning from the financial accounts for 2019, all companies are obliged to file accounts only in electronic form. Small business entities will file accounts in electronic form since 2020.

Those are not obliged to file accounts to this resource:

• public sector organizations;
• the Central Bank of the RF;
• religious organizations;
• credit and non-credit institutions filing accounting statements to the CB RF;
• organizations that accounting statements are concerned as state secret;
• other organizations – according to the decision of the Government of the RF.

ТOtherwise, many of the above mentioned companies will file their accounts to the FTS RF in accordance with the amendments to the Article 23 of the Tax Code accepted by the Federal Law of 28.11.2018 №447-FL. In particular, public sector tax payers are obliged to present annual accounting statements to tax authorities at its location not later than 3 months following the end of accounting period.

Besides, it is provided by the Law that the CB RF presents annual accounts (balance sheet and financial results report) not later than on May 15 of the year, following the accounting period.

Alongside with these measures, an obligation to file accounting statements to the state statistics authorities is cancelled.

Interested parties can get information from the State information resource of accounting (financial) statements for a fee.

It should be reminded that, according to the data form the Information and Analytical system Globas, during 2015 – 2017 about 2,4 mln financial statements at average have been filed to the state statistics authorities annually. According to experts, after creating of the State information resource of accounting (financial) statements amount of financial statements collected by the FTS RF will be close to 4 million and be comparable to the amount of companies, entered to the Unified state register of legal entities.