Tax Compliance tax consultant Ekaterina Kopylova commented on the key tax events in the past month in the material of Pravo.ru. 

Event:

The Ministry of Finance presented a bill with amendments to the Tax Code. Future changes will affect business and citizens in different directions. We wrote more about this reform in our material.

Event:

Russia signed SIDN with Malaysia and Abkhazia.

The course of reorientation of Russia's foreign trade policy to the markets of Asian and Middle Eastern countries will contribute to the development of cooperation between the countries, including in the tax sphere. In the context of sanctions restrictions, it is important to attract investment and create comfortable conditions for the development of trade and economic ties.

Event:

The court granted the claim of the Russian Federal Tax Service against LLC Torg (a Russian subsidiary of IKEA Group) to invalidate a transaction involving the transfer of funds to the foreign company Fami Limited (Ireland) and recovered 12.9 billion rubles from the Company to the income of the Russian Federation.

It seems that under the conditions of counter-sanctions restrictions the tax service will pay special attention to the practice of withdrawal of funds from the Russian Federation. And the case of the Federal Tax Service against IKEA will definitely help to form a uniform approach to resolving such situations.

It should also be noted that there are criminal risks of such transactions. Given the fact that the company's financial transactions were carried out using documents that contained knowingly false information about the grounds, purpose and destination of the transfer, there is a corpus delicti of Article 193.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (transfer of funds to accounts of non-residents using false documents), which was introduced in 2013 to «effectively counteract the illegal export of capital abroad».

Event:

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has already considered a series of cases, in particular the cases of Park Podvyaznovo LLC, Altai Meat and Dairy Plant Ugrinich LLC, and Binaka Soybean Processing Plant LLC regarding the priority of tax payments in connection with the sale of property in bankruptcy proceedings.

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation will consider the complaint of VEB.RF State Corporation and resolve the issue of the priority of VAT payment in connection with the sale of property in bankruptcy in case No. A40-323/19.

Repayment of recovered VAT amounts within the framework of bankruptcy cases is definitely an acute issue directly affecting the budget interests, since the recovered VAT is not a newly accrued tax, but a tax debt for transactions made before the debtor was recognized as bankrupt. 

It seems that in the case of Angstrem-T JSC (VEB.RF case) the Supreme Court will come to a similar conclusion and take into account the pro-budget legal position of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in Resolution No. 28-P of 31.05.2023.