The State Duma refused to reduce taxes in Russia
The State Duma of the Russian Federation refused to reduce VAT from 20% to 12% during 2021-2025. The corresponding bills prepared by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia factions were rejected by the parliamentary majority, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Nikolai Kolomeytsev, who presented the Communist bill, believed that Russia has enough resources to reduce the VAT rate, and this will lead to the development of business within the country.
“There are possible references to the fact that there will be a shortfall in income, I’ll just give you some interesting numbers. According to our calculations, the lost income in 2021 and 2022 will be 152 billion, in 2023 and 2024 – 228 billion, and from 2025 also 228.
But notice how we waste resources on other issues. Five trillion rubles were spent on 40 development institutions that have now been transformed. Show me where you saw the development?
But we know the gilded stairs in Rusnano, we know the billions transferred to Skolkovo, the University of Massachusetts for consulting services, and 47 billion transferred from Rusnano to offshore zones, to shell companies. Do you feel the difference?
If you look, the DIA is our favorite, the Central Bank’s instrument for the so-called rehabilitation of the banking system. Our Bin Bank and Otkrytie Bank recovered their health for 800 billion rubles. But not a single mine that Bean Bank bankrupted received a single penny, and money was allocated for reorganization.
Our Mosoblbank recovery cost 129 billion, Bank of Moscow - 294 billion rubles. In general, we spent about five trillion rubles on the so-called rehabilitation of banks, and in fact covering the money stolen by the founders.
Well, how about you, we spent ten trillion for nothing, but here we don’t want to give our enterprises, which provide wages and pay taxes to all levels of budgets, which are the same socially oriented businesses,” said the representative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
The representative of A Just Russia, Valery Gartung, also shares a similar opinion. In his opinion, the increase in VAT from 18 to 20%, which occurred last year, did not play a negative role.
“They followed the same logic when they raised the retirement age – they say there is not enough money in the country, we spend too much on pensioners, so let’s increase the retirement age. By the same logic, they froze the funded pension and also sent it to the budget. And they said that we would finance national projects through this, and the economy would grow.
But what do we see now, how are our national projects financed? Extremely bad. Are there any results? No. Is the economy growing? No. Citizens' incomes are falling. As a matter of fact, the demand for labor is also decreasing; look, the pandemic has also added to the situation here.
And it turns out that we have millions of unemployed, the state has no additional income. The most interesting thing is that by raising VAT, they were going to replenish the budget. But at the same time, they carried out a tax maneuver, according to which export duties on oil were reset to zero. In fact, they abandoned the taxation of hydrocarbon exports. At the same time, shifting the main tax burden to domestic consumption, increasing the mineral extraction tax.
What did all this lead to? In addition to the fact that the export of hydrocarbons became more profitable, domestic processing of raw materials became unprofitable, and the oligarchs lined up to the government with a request: “Support us.” Negative excise taxes and special AIT tax regimes have come in, where no mineral extraction tax is collected; as I have already said, export duties on oil are zeroed out.
Thus, planning to collect additional money for the budget, the balance turned out to be negative. It just happened - they collected money from citizens - I mean raising the retirement age, freezing the funded pension, I haven’t yet said about the refusal to index pensions for working pensioners, increasing the survival period every year by six months - that’s also 2,3% each year reduces the pension of citizens. That is, they collected one string at a time from all over the country, but for the oligarchs, first of all, for the raw material producers,” the deputy asserts.
However, United Russia, which has a majority, did not support both bills.
“A reduction in the tax rate cannot lead to economic benefits for taxpayers in the form of the difference between the current rate and the rate assumed by these bills.
Nikolai Vasilyevich also referred to experts. Here, according to numerous expert opinions, they indicate that a reduction in the VAT rate may have a limited and short-term impact on increasing the rate of economic growth, and a significant part of the bonus received by the economy, if there is one, will go to non-manufacturing and high-tech industries , but to the oil sector, the service sector and importers,” said Ayrat Farrakhov, a member of the Committee on Budget and Taxes.
Alexander Sherin, a member of the LDPR faction, who spoke after him, proposed in this case to give examples of successful Russian enterprises that can boast of expansion in foreign markets, including in countries where VAT has been abolished, for example, in the USA and Japan.
“If we have a lot of specialists, and they are in the government and give negative conclusions, then show me the Russian cars that are driven in Japan and Germany, show me our Russian telephone or our Russian machines that have filled industrial enterprises around the world, so how competitive we are.
If the Russian Federation, in the eyes of certain experts, is perceived as a backward country, a raw material appendage to the world economy, then the opinion of these people is understandable. Then VAT not only doesn’t need to be lowered, it will still be increased,” Sherin said.
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