Court upholds 17.8 bln rbl additional taxes for Sakhalin Energy

MOSCOW, May 13 (PRIME) -- The Arbitration Court of the Far Eastern District has upheld decisions of two lower courts to acknowledge a payment notice that makes Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin-2 project, to pay an additional profit tax of 17.8 billion rubles, the court said in a statement on Thursday.

The dispute emerged over the order and deadline for payment of a corporate profit tax for 2019. Foreign companies should submit tax statements no later than April 15 of the year following the reporting year, the Federal Tax Service calculates the tax and sends a payment notice with a payment deadline.

On March 18, 2020, Sakhalin Energy submitted a tax statement in which it said that the profit tax amounted to around U.S. $1.6 billion. The company also asked the service to send a payment notice before March 24 so that it pays the tax on March 26. The service did not send the notice before the date, and Sakhalin Energy paid 105.3 billion rubles to the Russian budgets on March 26, or $1.6 billion in rubles at the exchange rate as of February 28.

But on April 1, the first interregional inspection of the Federal Tax Service in the Sakhalin Region sent a payment notice that included the tax sum of 123.1 billion rubles, or $1.6 billion in rubles at the exchange rate as of March 31. The company said the increase was illegal, as it dutifully paid the tax on its own, but the Arbitration Court of the Sakhalin Region and the Fifth Arbitration Court of Appeal sided with the tax service in 2020.

The Sakhalin-2 project includes Russia’s first plant for production of liquefied natural gas. Russian gas giant Gazprom owns 50% plus one share in the project’s operator Sakhalin Energy, while Royal Dutch Shell has 27.5% minus one share, and Japan’s Mitsui & Co. Ltd and Mitsubishi Corporation own 12.5% and 10%, respectively.

(74.0400 rubles – U.S. $1)

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