In the cur­rent eco­nom­ic and polit­ic­al en­vir­on­ment, and tak­ing in­to ac­count the lim­it­a­tions now im­posed by many for­eign banks with re­spect to the trans­fer of funds to Rus­sia, we ex­pect that for­eign pro­viders of elec­tron­ic ser­vices may face prac­tic­al dif­fi­culties with pay­ing VAT to the Rus­si­an budget for the first quarter of 2022. Ac­cord­ing to the ap­plic­able le­gis­la­tion, the tax is due to be paid on or be­fore 25 April 2022.Ac­cord­ing to the in­form­a­tion at our dis­pos­al, In­ter­re­gion­al tax in­spec­tion No. 7 in charge of the elec­tron­ic ser­vices’ agenda is col­lect­ing in­form­a­tion from tax­pay­ers on ex­pec­ted prob­lems with pay­ments with a view to provid­ing tech­nic­al solu­tions.That be­ing said, for­eign pro­viders of elec­tron­ic ser­vices in Rus­sia should con­firm with their for­eign banks in ad­vance wheth­er it is pos­sible to pay VAT to the Rus­si­an budget in due time. Any prob­lems iden­ti­fied may be re­por­ted to the In­ter­re­gion­al tax in­spec­tion No.7 via the feed­back form in the tax­pay­er’s on­line ac­count.For­eign pro­viders of elec­tron­ic ser­vices may also dis­cuss with their Rus­si­an cus­tom­ers the VAT pay­ment mech­an­ism for the flows. For ex­ample, the Rus­si­an cus­tom­er may choose to vol­un­tar­ily with­hold the VAT due from the pay­ment made to the for­eign pro­vider, us­ing the mech­an­ism provided in the let­ter* of the Fed­er­al Tax ser­vice dated 24.04.2019 No. СД-4-3/[email protected] However, this ap­proach may be ap­plied only in re­spect of fu­ture pay­ments to the for­eign pro­viders.* In Rus­si­an

On 9 March 2022, the Rus­si­an Pres­id­ent signed the Law* on the fourth stage of the cap­it­al am­nesty. Ac­cord­ing to the Law, un­der the fourth stage, in­di­vidu­als will be able to sub­mit, between 14 March 2022 and 28 Feb­ru­ary 2023, a spe­cial de­clar­a­tion re­flect­ing as­sets sub­ject to leg­al­isa­tion. The am­nesty will ap­ply to acts com­mit­ted be­fore 1 Janu­ary 2022.Cap­it­al am­nesty is the vol­un­tary de­clar­a­tion by in­di­vidu­als of their for­eign ac­counts, real es­tate, se­cur­it­ies and oth­er prop­erty held abroad. It in­volves the trans­fer of de­clared prop­erty to Rus­sia without crim­in­al, ad­min­is­trat­ive and tax li­ab­il­ity when the rel­ev­ant vi­ol­a­tions are re­lated to the de­clared prop­erty and ac­counts.Un­der the first three stages, which took place in 2015, 2017 and 2019, in­di­vidu­als were en­titled to sub­mit in­form­a­tion to the Fed­er­al Tax Ser­vice on land and oth­er im­mov­able prop­erty, vehicles, se­cur­it­ies (in­clud­ing shares), as well as par­ti­cip­at­ory in­terests and equity stakes in or­gan­isa­tions, con­trolled for­eign com­pan­ies and bank ac­counts loc­ated out­side Rus­sia that had not been de­clared be­fore.In con­trast to the pre­vi­ous stages, in­di­vidu­als will also be able to de­clare cash. Also, the word­ing “se­cur­it­ies” has been re­placed by “fin­an­cial as­sets”, al­low­ing not only shares and bonds, but also de­riv­at­ive fin­an­cial in­stru­ments (e.g. fu­tures, op­tions, etc.), to be de­clared in the fourth stage. The list of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to be at­tached to the spe­cial de­clar­a­tion has been sup­ple­men­ted.In re­la­tion to cash, guar­an­tees will be giv­en provided that the de­clar­ant de­pos­its the cash spe­cified in the de­clar­a­tion in­to cur­rent or sav­ings ac­counts with Rus­si­an banks with­in 30 days from the date of sub­mis­sion of the de­clar­a­tion to the tax au­thor­ity.Com­ment­sThe Law does not cla­ri­fy how cash de­pos­its in­to bank ac­counts will be con­firmed. It is also un­clear wheth­er cash flow state­ments on for­eign ac­counts will be audited and wheth­er it is ne­ces­sary to have doc­u­ments to prove the trans­ac­tions re­flec­ted in them. In this re­gard, we will fol­low fur­ther de­vel­op­ments in this area and keep you in­formed of new cla­ri­fic­a­tions.Those who par­ti­cip­ated in the pre­vi­ous stages of the cap­it­al am­nesty can also par­ti­cip­ate in the fourth stage. However, the Law does not provide for re­peat de­clar­a­tions with­in a single stage (i.e. a de­clar­a­tion can be sub­mit­ted only once). As a res­ult, it is im­port­ant to ana­lyse all as­sets and as­sess the pos­sib­il­ity of de­clar­ing, guar­an­tees and risks.The CMS Rus­sia team is ready to as­sist in this field by not­ably:car­ry­ing out an as­set ana­lys­is to as­sess the feas­ib­il­ity of par­ti­cip­at­ing in the cap­it­al am­nesty (in­clud­ing wheth­er it is pos­sible to file a de­clar­a­tion, con­sequences, be­ne­fits of ob­tain­ing guar­an­tees and po­ten­tial risks);pre­par­ing a spe­cial de­clar­a­tion and re­ports for pre­vi­ous peri­ods (i.e. ODDS, 3-ND­FL);as­sist­ing with the pre­par­a­tion of a set of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments;as­sist­ing with fil­ing re­turns to the tax au­thor­it­ies.  * In Rus­si­an

On Oc­to­ber 26, 2021 the Franco-Rus­si­an Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dustry (CCI France Russie), Nor­nick­el and the Na­tion­al Coun­cil on Cor­por­ate Gov­ernance with the sup­port of the French Em­bassy in Rus­sia held an ESG con­fer­ence. French and Rus­si­an reg­u­lat­ors, fin­an­cial in­sti­tu­tions and in­dus­tri­al cor­por­a­tions dis­cussed the pro­spects and chal­lenges of the new ESG real­ity. The event brought to­geth­er ex­perts from high-pro­file com­pan­ies and or­gan­isa­tions in­clud­ing France Dip­lo­matie, the Bank of Rus­sia, VEB.RF, Mo­scow Ex­change, Ros­bank, Gazprom­bank, Boiron, Schneider Elec­tric, La­farge­Holcim, Saint-Gobain, etc.Olga Odint­sova, Coun­sel and Head of New Busi­nesses and Product De­vel­op­ment at CMS Rus­sia, mod­er­ated a ses­sion on en­vir­on­ment­al re­spons­ib­il­ity and busi­ness ef­fi­ciency and a ses­sion on ESG rank­ings in Rus­sia and France.The En­vir­on­ment­al, So­cial & Cor­por­ate Gov­ernance agenda has firmly rooted in the glob­al eco­nomy to elim­in­ate in­equal­ity and en­sure ef­fi­cient use of nat­ur­al re­sources. Green com­pan­ies that com­ply with ESG cri­ter­ia get easi­er ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments, while busi­nesses not com­mit­ted to ESG prin­ciples are find­ing it in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult to get ac­cess to such in­vest­ments. Read the full event re­port on the web­site of the Franco-Rus­si­an Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dustry.