Analytics and brochures

Foreign trade and customs regulation has been completely reformed following the creation of the Customs Union (the “CU”) of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Amendments to the Russian Tax Code that modified the notion of tax resident for personal income tax purposes came into force on 1 January 2007. The notion is crucial for the establishment of the tax rate (13% or 30%) with respect to the income of foreign employees. To date, the re is no well-established judicial practice on the application of this article. The Russian Ministry of Finance has only recently started to develop its position on this issue and has been very cautious. In practice, this gives rise to numerous ques¬tions relating to the essence of such amendments and dif¬ferences compared to the previous procedure.

Looking back on the year gone by, let me go through the most significant events affecting taxpayers, the business climate and the Russian tax system.

Since October 2010, the manufacturers and importers of copying equipment (computers, cell phones, etc) and media (CDs, memory sticks, etc) have been required to pay 1% of their sales (of the customs value of goods sold) for the purposes of financing compensation to be paid to authors. This levy is in essence a new tax.

It has been a year since the first conference on Islamic finance in December 2009. Over the year there have been quite a number of significant events taking place, all of which will influence the development of Islamic finance in Russia.

The establishment of the Customs Union between Russia, Belorussia and Kazakhstan has complicated substantially the system of customs valuation.