Menyailo and Chaly clashed over the law on tax rates for FEZ residents
Sevastopol, January 16 (PolitNavigator, Alexander Kononov) – On January 13, Sevastopol Governor Sergei Menyailo vetoed a law previously adopted by the city’s Legislative Assembly, which was supposed to come into force on the New Year. Chaly agreed that a better version of the law was possible, but at the same time expressed their readiness to defend their own position.
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Even before the New Year, the government submitted for consideration to the Legislative Assembly the final version of the draft law on tax rates for residents of the Free Economic Zone (FEZ), which provided for a rate of 2% for the first three years and 6% thereafter. Chaly personally called for sabotaging the proposals of the government of Sevastopol, agreed upon with the government of the Russian Federation and the government of Crimea, and to support a zero rate for the first three years and 10% in the future, since these proportions seemed to him the most interesting.
As a result, the governor’s order vetoed the law, one of the arguments for which was precisely the difference in interest rates in Sevastopol and Crimea. As a second reason, the government indicated that this would increase the tax burden on enterprises participating in the SEZ register in comparable periods by almost 1,5 times, which could lead to an outflow of investment in the future and negatively affect the investment climate. At the same time, Menyailo directly called Chaly’s scheme an offshore zone.
The reaction to this attack by Menyailo from the city’s legislative branch came in the person of the chairman of the standing committee on the budget, deputy Vyacheslav Aksenov, who told reporters that three days would be enough for the government to issue a new draft law, “so that in a week we could already approve the decision.” , he explained.
At the same time, Aksenov noted that “in the governor’s letter, by the way, there were good points,” which, in his opinion, “deserve to be reflected in the new version of the law,” however, in response to clarifying questions from journalists about what all Aksenov did not say anything intelligible exactly what he meant by this vague formulation, limiting himself to the same general phrases, although in fact he called the SEZ format itself nothing more than an offshore zone, regardless of interest rates.
The most that we managed to find out from him was that a compromise with the government is still possible, but he did not explain what could become the basis and condition for this compromise. Aksenov refused to comment at all on the question of whether the Legislative Assembly is ready to abandon the zero rate.
“We believe that a compromise is possible here and a better version of the law is possible than the one that was adopted taking into account the governor’s initiative. But if the best doesn’t work, then it will stop at the good ones, and then we’ll fight for our position,” he explained.
Vyacheslav Aksenov also noted that the government’s argument in favor of the fact that the 2% tax rate was agreed upon with the government and Crimea is not tenable.
“We have not received documents from the Russian government stating that it does not recommend such rates to us. Our government was asked to wait a week due to the fact that it would be desirable for us to act in the same direction as Crimea. We met with the government and reviewed the law a week later than we had previously planned. But during this week there were no changes, so the Assembly, realizing that the issue cannot be postponed further, that our entrepreneurs are waiting for this decision, adopted it. After that, Crimea accepted other bets. That is, it turns out that we did not accept the same bets as Crimea, but Crimea did not accept the same bets as us,” he said.
On Tuesday, January 20, deputies plan to create a conciliation commission to override the veto of the governor of Sevastopol.
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