Alexander Shokhin suggested four ways how billionaires do not pay a one-time contribution to the budget

More than once the state listened to the requests of big business. Now the government has asked the most profitable companies to help fill the treasury, and in response, the idea was to spread the burden on all entrepreneurs. RSPP represented by Alexander Shokhinand once again he will find convenient excuses for the participants of the Forbes list?

Most recently, the state agreed not to take into account the paper profit received from the revaluation of foreign exchange assets when calculating tax. In March last year, when the dollar was worth more than 100 rubles, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) made such a proposal. The easing was in the hands of large exporters and importers who have liabilities and deposits in foreign currency. If earlier companies dealt with currency differences at the end of each month, then in 2022-2024 they are allowed not to take into account a positive exchange rate difference when paying income tax until the loan in foreign currency is repaid or the foreign currency deposit is closed. For negative exchange rate differences, this norm has been in effect since 2023. They feared the collapse of the economy. But large companies, on the contrary, received large profits.

This was followed by a sharp strengthening of the ruble, as a result of which enterprises with outstanding obligations in foreign currency were able to ignore the resulting savings on interest in income. Less profit – less tax and, accordingly, revenues to the budget. In some cases, the budgets of regions where large exporters are registered have become victims of a sharp reversal in the price of the dollar. Every month, companies pay income tax in advance, and as the ruble strengthened, regional authorities began to receive “letters of happiness” about the need to return “overpaid income”.

Then the exporters went to meet. Lobbying in the form of only requests or something else worked. Some even increased their holdings by buying the property of foreigners who left the market. Now the state has turned to big business with a request. It was in order to avoid an increase in taxes that they asked to replenish the treasury in a different way. One-time. But here exporters invent any ways to remove the issue of a voluntary one-time contribution to the budget from the agenda. With all this, in October, for the first time in a year and a half, the number of closed IPs exceeded the number of open ones. Entrepreneurs became less by 1530 people.

In search of additional sources of income for the budget (the deficit of which in January 2023, according to the preliminary estimate of the Ministry of Finance, amounted to 1.76 trillion rubles), the state again returned to the idea of ​​collecting a one-time voluntary contribution from large businesses. The total amount of the collection can be approximately 200-250 billion rubles. This idea was expressed by First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government Andrey Belousov in December last year at the bureau of the board of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

“The fact is that last year’s financial results were very good and many companies, especially in the first half of the year, had strong positive results for the first three quarters,” he explained the position of the authorities.

In this context, the windfall tax was mentioned – the so-called tax on “income brought by the wind”, first introduced in the UK in 1997 after the privatization of the 1980s. At the same time, the authorities insist on the voluntary nature of such a contribution. Earlier, in December, it was proposed to collect a one-time fee from the coal industry and fertilizer producers, but since then it has not been possible to clarify the criteria for payers and non-payers of this fee.

It would seem, from whom else can the state expect support in difficult times, if not from big business, which earns millions and billions on Russian natural resources. Take, for example, PhosAgro – at the end of the last year, the company paid record dividends. According to experts, Andrei Guryev and his family members could receive almost 50 billion rubles …

But first of all, business protects its income, everything else, apparently, is not its problem. Therefore, the RSPP called the initiative of the authorities to share windfall profits “unrealizable”: they say that the market situation has ceased to be favorable, business marginality has decreased, increased severance tax rates, social investments, complex corporate procedures and the impossibility of raising taxes in the middle of the year. In general, a whole set of “why not”.

“It cannot be said that the situation in 2023 will allow these companies to rely on free cash,” commented Alexander Shokhin business position. Acting on the principle of “criticize – offer”, the union put forward counter ideas.

Income tax increase. According to Alexander Shokhinand, you can do it simply – increase income tax: by only 0.5%, but for everyone. The head of the RSPP believes that at the current moment such a decision will be the most balanced.

“In the event of an aggravation of the budget deficit, the easiest way to solve the problem is additional taxation of profits. According to our calculation, an additional 0.5 p.p. to the federal part of the income tax would be sufficient to reach the level of additional income that the government expects to receive in the form of a voluntary contribution from businesses,” he explained.

The Ministry of Finance has already opposed this proposal. The department believes that in the past year, super-profits “blew with the wind” not in the entire economy, but only in certain sectors. Therefore, such “smearing” looks unjustified. The RSPP clearly sees it differently. And although the head of the organization made a reservation about the need to withdraw small and medium-sized businesses from the increase in income tax, it is not difficult to imagine how everything can turn out in modern realities.

According to Alexander Shokhinand, at the disposal of the state there are other ways to use the funds of big business for their needs. For example, the government could consider the following options.

Issue OFZ of a new type. These are “additional government bonds, linked, among other things, to the situation with a budget deficit: if the budget deficit is above a certain level, then coupons may not be repaid, interest not paid, and below a certain level, the service is in full with compensation for the fact that was underpaid earlier,” explains the head of the RSPP. In fact, the state is offered not to receive a tax on excess profits from business, but to borrow it.

Social investment. Many companies are already voluntarily investing in social projects and investing in projects for the development of the territories of their presence. “In general, if you invest in projects, they should be business-oriented, for example, closed to the infrastructure that both business and the population need,” the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs believes. It is difficult to perceive this otherwise than as an attempt by billionaires to additionally take into account the fulfillment of elementary social obligations.

Public private partnership. Business is ready to actively work in the field of PPP development, says Alexander Shokhin. At the same time, it is clear that projects that involve their completion with a subsequent return on investment are more preferable for businesses. In this format, it would be possible to develop regional infrastructure – public utilities, for example. The “translation” of these words can be as follows: big business is ready to fork out, but only on shares with the state and subject to a return on investment.

This kind of negotiations between the government and business is not the first year. Andrey Belousov began to “rock” the topic of windfall profits of commodity companies back in 2018. The oligarchs fiercely resisted the increase in the mineral extraction tax. The power of the “raw materials lobby” will be easier to imagine if we remember that many companies in the metallurgical industry and fertilizer producers are owned by their owners through offshore companies (for example, PhosAgro by Andrey Guryev and NLMK by Vladimir Lisin).

By the way, it is Vladimir Lisin who heads the committee on tax policy of the RSPP, and is also a member of the bureau of the board of the union. The full composition of the bureau is not disclosed. However, at least until recently, it included both Andrey Guryev and Alexei Mordashov, who replaced Lisin at the head of the Russian Steel lobbying association.

It is very likely that the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs is confident that the state will choose one of the “alternative options” proposed to it for replenishing the budget. These options are difficult to perceive otherwise than as heat traps shot by the owners of large commodity companies in order to save their windfall profits.