At the end of this February, the Government of the Russian Federation adopted a new program to support entrepreneurs within the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus. Funds for this purpose are allocated from the reserve fund.

The introduced easy-term loan program applies to both small businesses and large enterprises among the least recovered after the pandemic industries, such as culture, tourism, sports, entertainment, hotel and catering business.

Loans are issued for 12 months at a rate of 3%. At the same time, it is not required to pay the loan principal and interests in the first half of the year; in the second half of the year, the payments are divided into monthly equal shares.

The loan amount is up to 500 million RUB, it depends on the number of employees employed and the condition that at least 90% of the workplaces are retained during the validity of the loan agreement.

Loans are issued from March 9 to July 1, 2021. The guarantor is the State represented by the State Development Corporation VEB.RF

The funds allocated by the Government of the Russian Federation will be used to pay the banks the difference between the market and preferential interest rates, as well as for the borrowers' debt repayment in the first half of the loan agreements.

According to the Government estimates, around 75 thousand companies can potentially use such assistance, with about 1.5 million people employed.

The Federal Law No. 6-FZ dated 17.02.2021 amended the Article 86 of Part I of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation to oblige credit institutions to provide tax authorities with the following documentation upon their requests:

• the copies of passports of individuals with the right to receipt or dispose of funds on customer accounts;
• powers of attorney for opening, maintaining and termination of customer accounts;
• contracts for opening of accounts;
• applications for opening or termination of accounts;
• service agreements in the "client-bank" system;
• documents and information provided by the clients or their representatives while opening of accounts;
• samples of signatures and seal impressions;
• information on beneficial owners, including information obtained by the bank while identifying the beneficial owners;
• information on beneficiaries, including particular transactions or transactions for a certain period;
• information on client's representatives.

It is assumed, that such information is provided not only on legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, but also individuals.

The tax authorities have the right to request such information in the following cases:

• tax audits;
• requesting documents from the taxpayer in accordance with the Article 93.1 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation "Requesting documents (information) concerning a taxpayer, levy payer or tax agent and information concerning particular transactions»;

To obtain information on individuals who are not individual entrepreneurs, the requests to banks must be approved by the head of higher tax authority (the regional Department of the Federal Tax Service of Russia) or the head, deputy head of the Federal Tax Service of Russia.