Page 53 - RusRPTNov18

issue this year given the substantial spike in oil prices," Alfa Bank commented on April 23.
In 2016 Russia faced a crisis as the hole in the budget was not RUB200bn but RUB2 trillion and had no way to finance it. In the end a 19% of Rosneft was sold in a faux privatisation that turned out to be more of a loan and the government got through the year.
Covering the dividend short fall gap will be a lot easier. The ministry could increase net domestic market borrowing by exactly RUB200bn in 2018, the RIA news agency reported on Monday, Reuters and RIA Novosti said in a separate report citing the head of the ministry's debt department Konstantin Vyshkovsky.
Another survey by RBC business portal showed that 90% of the managers of large Russian companies point to increasing presence of the state in the economy. 50% of the respondents see the state's share in the economy as "extremely high", 23% as "high", and 17% as "rather high".
Previously the Finance Ministry argued that in Central and Eastern Europe SOEs on average pay 70% dividends. It also sees uncollected dividends as representing an unjustified indirect form of state subsidy , giving state companies an unfair advantage over the private sector.
The "subsidy" for the four largest SOEs alone (Rosneft and Gazprom oil and gas giants, Sberbank and VTB bank) is estimated at RUB350bn, or 0.4% of GDP for 2016, and about RUB300bn annually in the past five years.
Tax service to separate personal, business accounts. The Federal Tax Service (FTS) has gained new powers to request information from banks on the accounts of taxpayers, allowing it to separate personal and business accounts.
The proposals strengthen tax protections for individuals, since a business owner's personal accounts would be protected from being frozen due to problems with a business account. But overall, FTS is strengthening its oversight within the banking system, and therefore increasing its relative institutional power within politics and business. Separating different accounts and deposits from tax and legal liabilities entails collecting more information. That information will be of greater and greater use for revenue collection as the future of oil and gas rents grows less certain for long-term budget planning and, therefore, state spending plans.
● Tax officials will now be able to ask banks for not just account totals, but also for a breakdown of deposits and balances.
● Tax inspectors will be required to specify whether they are interested in personal or business accounts when they request information from banks. This rule will protect individual entrepreneurs' personal accounts.
● This change will enable tax officials to more easily collect funds from the accounts of delinquent taxpayers.
● More detailed information about deposits and withdrawals will be especially helpful to tax authorities if there is another attempt to tax spending. Previously, a 13% tax on large purchases by the unemployed was struck down by the Supreme Court.
53 RUSSIA Country Report November 2018 www.intellinews.com