PRESS: LinkedIn gets listed with Russian tax service to pay VAT

MOSCOW, Mar 29 (PRIME) -- U.S. professional social network LinkedIn, which was blocked in Russia in November for law disobedience, has been registered by the local Federal Tax Service as a taxpayer to contribute an 18% valued added tax from the services provided to Russians, the Izvestiya daily reported on Wednesday.

“LinkedIn will be available in Russian as usual, and we hope to restore our service in Russia in the future,” a company spokesperson told Izvestiya.

“We’re disappointed by actions of the communications service to block LinkedIn, since it deprives users in Russia of access to our services. We think we respect all the laws applicable. Meanwhile, regardless of the talks with the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, we’ve failed to reach a compromise to lift the blocking.”

The communications watchdog said earlier that the social network’s refusal to keep bases with personal data of Russians on the country’s territory confirms the lack of the company’s interest to work on the local market, as the law obliges Internet companies to do.

The authority added LinkedIn to the register of forbidden information and asked connection operators to block it, the first case of muting one of the biggest social networks in the country.

LinkedIn belongs to Microsoft, which is also registered with the tax authority, which now has 128 foreign Internet companies among taxpayers, including Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, GoDaddy, Google and Netflix.

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