The Federal Tax Service of Russia (FTS) offers the regional and local budget draftsmen to expand the list of information that doesn’t relate to tax secrecy. It is suggested in particular for legal entities to disclose the information about the amount of taxes paid, provision of tax accounts, average staff number, property tax.

In accordance with Art. 102 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation (TC RF), any data about the tax payer received by tax authorities, internal affairs agencies, investigation agencies, state budget fund bodies or customs agencies falls within the secrecy. At the same time the tax secrecy doesn’t protect such publicly available information as tax payer identification number (INN), violation of the tax legislation by the tax payer and the measures taken in this regard, special tax regime treated by the tax payer.

Last October the Government promoted a bill which gives access to tax secrecy for local and regional financial agencies.

At the same time, the doubters give notice that disclosure of the tax secrecy to general public will lead to leak of data and its availability for swindlers.

The supporters of these amendments consider that corresponding changes in Art. 102 of TC RF will make the business operations more transparent. It will favorably affect not only the work of the tax agencies, but also the forecast accuracy of the regional budget. Unfortunately, nowadays many entrepreneurs work “behind closed doors”, referring to the tax secrecy.

On March 31, 2015 the Federal Law №67-FZ has come into force, which is aimed at guaranteeing the reliability of the data provided by the registration of legal entities (LE) and individual entrepreneurs (IE). In particular, grounds for refusal of state registration of LE have been complemented.

Moreover, it has been clarified the definition of «front party». In the Criminal Code of the RF it has been imposed also the responsibility for submitting the data to a registering authority that resulted in the introduction of information about front parties into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (EGRUL).

It has been increased up to 1 year the period of limitation for the institution of administrative proceedings in the sphere of state registration of LE and IE. Also it has been established the administrative responsibility for repeated commission of an administrative offense, in the form of failure to submit or submission of misinformation on a legal entity or an individual entrepreneur to the body, carrying out the state registration.

The Federal law specifies the procedure of the identification of the citizen, who has applied for a notarial act to be performed, as well as requirements for documents, being submitted for notarial acts to be performed: requirements to the notarized document have been specified and the procedure for submission of documents for the state registration of LE and IE has been established.

In the Federal Law "On Limited Liability Companies" it has been established an obligatory notarial confirmation of the fact of decision to increase the share capital taken by general meeting of company’s members, as well as its membership presented at the decision.

It is also determined that EGRUL must contain the information that a legal person has decided to change the location. This obliges to introduce, among other, a record of unreliability of data about a legal entity contained in EGRUL into the Unified Federal Register of information about the facts of the activity of legal entities.