Tax Compliance tax consultant Ekaterina Kopylova commented on the main tax events of March in the monthly digest of Pravo.ru. 

Deadline for return of tax overpayment

Last month the Supreme Court considered the case of Ilged LLC, which concerned the deadline for refund of overpaid tax. The company filed a revised declaration for corporate property tax and an application for refund of the overpayment after receiving a court decision to exclude the building from the cadastral list. However, the tax office refused, citing the lapse of the three-year period, calculating it from the date of the original tax payment.

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation pointed out that for taxes that are self-declared and calculated and paid by the taxpayer (such as the tax on property of organizations), in the usual situation when refunded at the request of the taxpayer submitted to the tax authority, the three-year period for the refund of overpaid tax begins to run at the end of the tax period, but not earlier than the deadline when, in accordance with the legislation on taxes, a tax return must be submitted, since it is at that moment that the taxpayer must know the amount of tax, according to which the taxpayer is to pay the overpaid tax.

In this case, the taxpayer retains the right to file a claim for the return of the overpaid amount from the budget in civil or arbitration proceedings, and in this case, the general rules for calculating the statute of limitations apply. The Supreme Court referred to the Decree of the Russian Federation of 25.02.2009, № 12882/08, which noted that «the question of determining the time when the taxpayer knew or should have known about the overpayment of tax, should be resolved taking into account the assessment of the totality of all the circumstances relevant to the case, in particular, to determine the reason why the taxpayer allowed the overpayment of tax, the availability of his ability to correctly calculate the tax according to the original tax return, changes in current legislation during the period under review, the taxpayer's tax return and the taxpayer's tax return».

Thus, it is important to remember that the period for the return of overpayment:

• begins to be calculated not earlier than the deadline for submission of the declaration;
• may be recognized by the court as not missing, taking into account the reasons for the overpayment, objective circumstances, such as the impossibility of correctly calculating the tax according to the data of the initial tax return, changes in legislation, etc.

Confirmation of the tax residence of bank customers

Earlier we wrote in detail about this initiative. In general, the events of recent months suggest that the Federal Tax Service is actively engaged in improving the means and approaches to determining the real status of tax residency. It is logical that in this case the financial department expects to attract specialized services and banks as professional agents capable of aggregating data confirming the actual presence of individuals on the territory of the Russian Federation.

At present, the supervisory authority receives data on changes in the tax resident status from tax agents or individuals themselves. At the same time, sending out requests for supporting documents by fan mail is by no means the best option. Automating and making this process transparent is a long-standing task, which seems to be starting to be realized in practice.

Time will tell how effective the chosen tools will be and how it will affect banks and taxpayers. In many respects it depends on the technical ability of banks to fulfill the new regulation.

Taxpayers should prepare themselves for the relevant requests from banks and decide how to respond to them, including whether to provide supporting documents and detailed arguments regarding their stay in Russia.