The bill in Russia would have received approval by the State Duma and explained that issuers of digital assets are exempt from paying value-added tax. Income tax should still get paid, but this payment would get reduced to 13% – 15% depending on the case.
Recently published reports highlight that legislators in Russia recently approved a bill with which they establish tax guidelines applicable to digital assets, specifically highlighting that the issuers of said currencies are exempt from paying value-added tax.
Tax Exemption for Issuers of Digital Currencies
This information got revealed by a report highlighted by the Reuters news agency, in which they expressed that the bill got approved in the second and third discussions led by the members of the State Duma today. What is interesting here is that the proposal exempts the issuers of digital currencies from paying the value-added tax and the operators of information systems that help the issuance to take effect.
The value-added tax traditionally applies to goods focused on how much their value has grown at each production stage. But reports highlighted by various tax organizations presented that almost no nation set the payment of said duty to the exchange of digital assets.
However, this does not exempt the entities from paying income tax, although it poses a significant reduction in the case of digital assets. In Russia, this value got set at 20% for various assets, but for digital currencies, it will be 13% for Russian companies and 15% for other responsible entities.
Although the State Duma has already approved the policy, it still requires the upper house and President Vladimir Putin’s approval to get enacted as official law.
Ambiguous Stances Regarding the Assets in Russia
The enacted procedure in the Russian parliament represents the most recent effort in the Soviet nation to give legal frameworks to digital assets, even though there are conflicting positions regarding the issuance, circulation, and commercialization of said currencies at the local level.
On the one hand, we have President Putin himself and several high-ranking officials that vote for these currencies to get legally approached as soon as possible to legitimize their position in the economy. But the Bank of Russia is against such a possibility, claiming that digital assets could weaken the local economy and become a lethal weapon against the nation’s interests.
The problem arrived during a difficult moment for the Soviet country because due to the armed incursion against the Ukrainian region, a prominent group of nations and international organizations have imposed several punishments and financial blockades to close channels for financing war.
The question also touches on some points, like whether Russia could look to digital assets as a tool to avoid such punishments. Some embrace this possibility by highlighting the operational features of digital assets. Others assure that this would be impossible since the sector’s market does not have enough liquidity to back up the requirements of such a big nation.
By: Jenson Nuñez
