Report: Finance Ministry works to cut labor taxes

MOSCOW, Feb 20 (PRIME) – Russia’s Finance Ministry is working on the ways to reduce the excessive labor tax burden and find compensatory funds, Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview to RBC published Thursday.

“We are now also thinking about cutting labor taxes, because it in fact amounts to 30% of the payroll tax payments plus 13% of the personal income tax. The burden is high, and we don’t see it in other countries where the employees undertake to pay the bulk of the payroll tax. Here, employers make the major part of the payroll payments,” he said.

The burden is excessive for businesses prompting them to develop evasion schemes. “The most important thing now is to find sources that would compensate reduction of the payroll payments,” he said.

The ministry has no ready-made bill on the matter. A reduction of insurance payments by 1 percentage point would cost about 200 billion rubles.

The reduction should be noticeable for businesses, he said.

(63.6873 rubles – U.S. $1)

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