PRESS: Ministry offers to change tax approach for Google, Facebook

MOSCOW, Oct 3 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Finance Ministry has suggesting forcing Google and Facebook to share incomes from local business, while now these profits are not taxed and the budget suffers losses, business daily RBC reported on Thursday.

In search of new sources of replenishing coffers, the ministry has started working on options of a tougher tax burden for global suppliers of digital services.

The authority wants to change approaches to taxation so that digital corporations like Google, Facebook, and Apple would share their incomes from the Russian audience with the local budget instead of paying taxes by place of its headquarters registration.

The proposition appeared in a new draft of the budget and the tax policy for 2020 and the planned period of 2021 and 2022.

Technological giants work all over the world, but pay the profit tax by the place of registration. For example, European offices of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are registered in Ireland, where the profit tax is at 12.5%.

The Russian ministry wants to change the law so that digital companies would declare their incomes for taxes in the jurisdiction where their users are, which will make possible to fairly distribute taxes with no losses for the budget.

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