Russia to study the possibility of introducing a digital tax

The Russian Ministry of Finance wants to tax foreign companies earning profits from digital services provided on the territory of the country. Deputy head of the ministry Alexei Sazanov заявил in an interview with the auditing firm KPMG.

According to him, the ministry will consider the advisability of a digital tax, drawing on global experience.

“This is a global trend; discussions are underway on the OECD platform to create a supranational tax that would be distributed among different countries. But so far there has been no tangible progress in this direction,” the official said.

The OECD currently chairs a group of almost 140 countries, including Russia, which is discussing updates to the rules for taxing cross-border trade in light of the emergence of global giants Google, Apple and Facebook.

Sazanov cited Britain, where a 2% tax on the revenues of search engines, social networks and online marketplaces has been in place for almost a year.

“We will look at its results and consider the advisability of introducing the tax in Russia. There is no final decision on this yet,” the deputy minister said.

Earlier, US IT giants said that the digital tax discriminates against tech companies and does not align with international tax principles.

As a reminder, Russian authorities began tightening controls over the cryptocurrency sphere. In early December 2020, a bill was submitted to the State Duma proposing taxation of operations with digital assets for citizens. Later amendments were promised to be refined due to arbitrary penalties.

At the same time, public officials were required to dispose of their holdings in cryptocurrency by April 1, 2021.

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