As the Russian government is on the hunt for new sources of revenue to meet its ambitious $180 billion spending plan, a government clampdown on shadow economy and improving efficiency has led to a 22% soar in tax collection last year, Intellinews reports.
According to the news outlet, the Kremlin expects most of the new money to come from a VAT hike from 18% to 20% that went into effect January 1, as well as an IT overhaul of the tax service.
A considerable part of non-commodity sectors of the economy showed a rapid increase in the payment of taxes, which has been attributed to the tax service effectively closing down scams and bringing more of the shadow economy into the light.
According to the preliminary estimates of Russia’s Federal Tax Service (FTS) reported by Kommersant, tax revenue will nominally grow by about 22% by the end of 2018, after rising by 19.8% in 2017. And these increases do not correlate with the expected dynamics of GDP growth in 2018, the dynamics of industrial production, or with the dynamics of consumption, which were all changing ten times more slowly, Intellinews writes.
According to the data for the three quarters, the tax burden for legal entities was 11.5% of turnover, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to 2017. The largest increase in the load was recorded in the fuel and energy complex, where it increased from 45.4% to 52.1% due to an increase in the mineral extraction tax.
