PRESS: Justice Ministry against tax on excessive profits

MOSCOW, Jun 6 (PRIME) -- The Justice Ministry thinks that the draft bill on a tax on the excess profits for previous years is unconstitutional, Vedomosti business daily reported on Tuesday citing the bill’s documents.

On Monday, the Finance Ministry said in a statement in its Telegram channel that the government’s commission on legislative activity had approved the draft bill and excluded the payers of the unified agricultural tax from the list of entities that would have to pay the new tax.

The Finance Ministry earlier said that the mining industries were exempt from the tax on excess profits because the authorities already raised their fiscal burden in 2022, when they took 1.2 trillion rubles from gas giant Gazprom through a higher mineral extraction tax and set additional duties for the oil companies, Vedomosti reported.

“The Justice Ministry points out that excess profit for the previous years is the base for the new tax, which makes regulation of these legal relations retroactive. This contradicts Article 57 of the constitution, which stipulates that the laws that introduce new taxes or worsen the situation of the taxpayers should have no retroactive power,” the business daily reported.

Also, the authorities have provided no clear conditions for exempting some mining industries from the tax. No analysis of financial activities of the to-be-exempt companies was provided, while it is necessary to prove that their financial condition worsened, the Justice Ministry said as reported by Vedomosti.

All taxes and fees should have economic grounds, they could not be frivolous, the ministry added.

(81.3294 rubles – U.S. $1)

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