Large business announced difficulties with the transition to a single tax account

The transition to a single tax account will be complicated due to the departure of Western software developers from Russia, big business believes and asks to postpone the introduction of a new regime for a year. The Ministry of Finance is ready to discuss this, the Federal Tax Service believes

Representatives of large Russian companies - Severstal, Russian Railways, Gazprom, TMK, MTS, Norilsk Nickel and others - submitted objections to the bill on the introduction of a single tax account for business, which was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading in mid-February. Some of the remarks, in one form or another, have been made before, while others are related to the current regime of Western sanctions. A discussion between business and government representatives took place on April 25 at a meeting of the expert council under the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes (RBC followed the broadcast).

Business will be offered a new way to pay taxes Economics

The goal of introducing a single tax account was to simplify the procedure for paying taxes for businesses. Instead of many payment documents for various tax payments, companies and individual entrepreneurs, according to the bill, will have to send notifications of calculated tax amounts to the Federal Tax Service, and the tax authority will distribute money from their account in the right areas. The new order is expected to come into force on January 1, 2023.

What does business not like

The main claims of representatives of large companies are as follows:

The departure of enterprise software vendors (such as SAP) from the Russian market significantly complicates the introduction of a new system.

“According to our specialists who keep records, the adoption of the bill will not be a relief - on the contrary, it will provoke additional manual tuning of existing well-established systems. And in a situation where we have fallen under the limitations of SAP, any adjustments will now require twice as much time, ”said Olga Vaganova, head of the Severstal tax department.

Read on RBC Pro Pro European ports are closed to Russia. How to ship goods from China now Articles Pro Planning horizon - one day:logistics plunged into a new crisis"Zombie enterprises must be closed": how the industry reacts tosanctions Research Pro How consumer and marketing in Russia will change in 2022 Articles ProRussians switched to crisis shopping models:what and where they buy Research Pro Why the authorities are going to deprive foreign securities of tax benefits ArticlesPro Hostages of micromanagers: why companies massively return people to the office Articleswhy companies are massively returning people to the office Articleswhy companies are massively returning people to the office Articles

“Our tax calculation is built on three systems - Oracle, SAP and Teradata, which left Russia. And the main task for the next six months is the replacement of these instruments, an attempt to migrate to others, ”says Dmitry Kornev, head of the MTS tax department.

“In itself, the completion of the system for the transition to a single tax payment would not be so frightening if it were not for the current crisis situation and a number of other problems that IT services are now rapidly solving due to the departure of software manufacturers from Russia,” stated the head of the directorate for Tax and Corporate Policy of NLMK Dmitry Rudakov.

Earlier, the German software maker SAP announced its intention to stop supporting and servicing local products in Russia. The organization stopped working with companies that fell under the sanctions. In Russia, SAP sold enterprise resource management (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), production management (ERP Production Planning, MES, EAM, CAD) systems. Among her clients were Sberbank, Gazprom and a number of other companies. Oracle also suspended operations with Russia, and Microsoft stopped serving sanctioned clients.

The transition to a single tax account does not reduce the administrative burden, as the authorities declare.

“The bill does reduce the number of payment orders, but at the same time introduces the obligation to fill out notifications [on the calculated tax amounts required by the tax service to distribute a single payment for specific types of fees -], which retain all the same details and budget classification codes. One document is being replaced by another, and moreover, in order to complete this notification, existing business processes will have to be restructured,” said Nadiya Ziatdinova, Deputy Head of the Gazprom Tax Policy Department. “There is no need to talk about 100% simplification,” agreed Nina Pozdnyakova, head of TMK's Tax Accounting Methodology Directorate.

Inconvenient terms of payment of taxes.

The bill proposes uniform deadlines for submitting reports and transferring payments - the 20th and 25th of the month, respectively, which should simplify the payment calendar for businesses (while maintaining the frequency of declarations and payments). However, existing timelines tend to be less tight than those proposed. For example, the quarterly VAT return is now submitted on the 25th, and for income tax for the year - on March 28th. “Shortening the deadlines will lead to the fact that the taxpayer will submit any kind of reporting and subsequently clarify it several times. We do not support this,” said Pozdnyakova from TMK. “In terms of income tax and insurance premiums, we physically do not have time by the 20th. Profit is formed after all taxes, their closing date is the 10th, and at least 10 days are needed to collect information and generate reports”,

Decreased efficiency of working capital management.

The bill makes it possible to replenish a single account with one payment card and then only manage the distribution of funds, Rudakov from NLMK pointed out. However, this way we get an inefficient treasury, he is sure. “For big business, money works all the time - it lies on overnight [one-day deposits. - ] or somewhere else, constantly generating income. A one-time transfer of a large amount of taxes means a loss of efficiency of the free cash balance. I do not rule out that in practice we will put money into a single account at the last moment, immediately before debiting, so as not to lose this efficiency, ”he said.

Pavel Kolomensky, Tax Director at NLMK, summed up the opinion of representatives of large firms. “Big business does not see any advantages for itself in this bill. Our position is as follows: if the country needs it, as well as medium and small businesses, then we are ready not to interfere. However, it is important for us that its use does not lead to a deterioration of the current situation,” he said. Most of the participants of the event spoke in favor of postponing the entry into force of the bill for at least a year - until January 1, 2024, as well as postponing the general dates for reporting and transferring payments to the 25th and 28th of the month.

What did the authorities say

The Ministry of Finance understands the dissatisfaction of the business caused by the need to fill out notifications, said Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Sazanov. However, there is no way to get rid of them yet. “If, as information algorithms improve, we come to understand that we can abolish them, and sooner or later this will happen, this will be the next step in improving tax administration,” he said.

The notification is not a declaration and not some new document that needs to be filled out from scratch, said Deputy Head of the Federal Tax Service Konstantin Chekmyshev. “One document - the current payment that each taxpayer makes - is divided into two information flows. One part marks payments for the budget, and the other goes to the bank to show how much is being paid. Therefore, to call it a new separate document, especially from the point of view of additional costs for the taxpayer, it seems to us not entirely appropriate,” he stressed.

The Ministry of Finance is ready to work out the transfer of the general dates for reporting and transferring payments to the 25th and 28th of the month, Sazanov said. “This is a serious decision, so we will discuss it at the level of the Minister of Finance together with Andrei Mikhailovich [Makarov; Chairman of the Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes] and look for a compromise,” said the deputy minister. He also agreed to discuss the postponement of the bill's effective date, as he considered the business arguments regarding software problems worthy of attention.

The amount of business costs required to finalize the software in order to switch to a single tax payment roughly corresponds to the costs of changing one form of a tax return, Chekmyshev noted. “Therefore, this task is quite solvable before the end of this year,” he is sure. The deputy head of the Federal Tax Service also pointed out that foreign software manufacturers in most cases did not stop fulfilling their obligations to Russian companies.

Chekmyshev did not agree that it is worth considering postponing the entry into force of the law. According to him, even in the current situation, the new system will bring more benefits and will not worsen the situation of the business. In addition, he drew attention to the fact that more than six months remain before the full-scale application of the single tax account, while, according to the experience of the Federal Tax Service, one quarter is needed to test and refine such systems.

Favorable exchange rate at VTBFavorable exchange rate at VTB officesThe larger the amount, the greater the benefit.More than 1,000 branches across the countryPreliminary calculation in online converter