UPDATE: Business to make voluntary budget contribution once in 2023

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MOSCOW, Feb 21 (PRIME) -- The business’s voluntary contribution to the Russian budget will be made as a one-time payment in 2023, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters on Tuesday.

“We are talking about a one-time participation of the business this year. And in terms of growth of their financial results. We will compare the increase in financial results for 2022 and 2021 to 2020 and 2019,” he said.

Alexander Shokhin, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told PRIME that the authorities and the business have coordinated the one-time contribution as a mandatory payment.

“We agreed that it will be a mandatory payment, a so-called quasi-windfall tax, a tax that appeared out of thin air following a unique combination of favorable conditions for the work of companies and situations in some industries that allowed the companies to achieve greater financial results in 2022 and 2021 as compared with the previous couple of years,” he said.

But it is still unclear how one would calculate this windfall income for the purpose of this tax and how to collect it this year instead of 2024. The union assumed during the discussions that it may be some sort of a prepayment, and Shokhin also said that the government should incentivize the contribution with a discount for the companies.

First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov said earlier that the government is discussing a one-time budget contribution in 2023 with large companies, but is not negotiating a tax raise.

Siluanov also said that the initiatives voiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly will be funded in full.

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