ABOUT the creation of a unified information base for the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Customs Service, the heads of departments said at a joint meeting of the boards. This removes the question of the physical unification of the two departments. The exchange of data on violations of tax legislation, debts on customs payments, and customs declarations creates a complete dossier on the activities of businessmen and will help identify the activities of fly-by-night companies.
Already, departments are actively exchanging data from their databases, including through the creation of electronic customs offices, which will be located on government premises. This excludes direct contact between the declarant and the official. The FCS plans to create 8 electronic customs offices and 8 electronic declaration centers.
Information about risks in relation to taxpayers is included in the algorithms for automatic categorization of foreign trade participants. All data is included in the system of automatic categorization of foreign economic activity participants according to the degree of reliability. For example, in the electronic dossier of a foreign trade participant, information from the risk management system of the tax service is used. Tax services have sent over 1 million pieces of information about violators of tax laws. In 2018, customs officers sent information to the Federal Tax Service of Russia about more than 3 million declarations for goods, 1 million customs receipt orders, as well as over 11 million records about goods actually exported outside the customs territory of the EAEU.
Tax and customs authorities must continue to work together to improve the quality of administration and eliminate administrative barriers to honest business. The Federal Customs Service is faced with the task of increasing the number of users of the “single personal account” service by at least twice by the end of the year. At the same time, the share of payments paid by users must be at least 50% of the total amount. Igor Rebelsky, founder of the VIGTrans company, logistics operator and customs broker, commented on the innovations from a business point of view: “Now customs is trying to automate many processes, for example, a single personal account, this is very correct and convenient.” Unfortunately, in practice, technical failures are not uncommon when transferring data on funds from the accounts of regional customs offices to the ULS. Technical failures when declaring goods at the time of the transition of a foreign economic activity participant to the Unified Logistics System.
According to the head of the Federal Customs Service Vladimir Bulavin, further work will be aimed at building a unified mechanism for administering customs and tax payments based on modern digital technologies. This will make it possible to put up barriers for unscrupulous entrepreneurs and make the activities of departments as invisible as possible for law-abiding businesses. The head of the tax service added that as a result, the effectiveness of control measures coordinated with the Federal Tax Service of Russia has increased.
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov proposed to decide on the creation of a single fiscal authority by May 2018, citing the experience of a number of countries where the customs service is combined with the tax service. The official stated this while speaking at the board of the Federal Tax Service (FTS). According to the head of the Federal Tax Service Mikhail Mishustin, such an initiative was not discussed during a recent meeting with the president.
According to Igor Shuvalov, before the country enters a new political cycle - before May 2018 - a decision should be made on creating a unified fiscal body. “It exists in many countries, I constantly bring both the tax authorities and our customs officers to this point,” said the First Deputy Prime Minister during a speech at the Federal Tax Service board.
The merger of the Federal Tax Service with the Federal Customs Service (FCS) has been discussed for several years. For a long time, the services provided approximately equal amounts of revenue to the budget. However, with the beginning of digitalization of processes in the Federal Tax Service, tax revenues to the budget are significantly ahead of customs duties. In 2016, the Federal Customs Service provided 4.4 trillion rubles. budget revenues, Federal Tax Service - 6.9 trillion rubles. According to the draft budget for 2018–2020, this difference will increase even more. In 2018, FCS collections are planned at 4.8 trillion rubles, and Federal Tax collections - 9 trillion rubles, by 2020 - 5 trillion rubles. and 9.8 trillion rubles. respectively.
According to Igor Shuvalov, “if it is better and clearer for the state, which will receive a completely stable income through the administration of this service, and better for citizens and legal entities, such a decision should be made in May.”
As the head of the Federal Tax Service, Mikhail Mishustin, told reporters, the topic of creating a unified fiscal body was not discussed at the meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Monday. “The Federal Customs Service does not know whether this issue was discussed in the government or the presidential administration. If it was, then representatives of the service were not invited to it,” the service told Kommersant. According to Deputy Head of the Ministry of Finance Ilya Trunin, the government is not yet preparing specific documents for the implementation of this initiative. Now, the deputy minister believes, it is necessary to discuss building end-to-end mechanisms for interaction between the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Customs Service, when information from the moment of customs declaration is transmitted to the tax authority, which, in turn, helps to identify the “loss” of customs and then tax value.
Tatyana Grishina, Tatyana Edovina
How is the reform of the Federal Customs Service going?
In August, the Federal Customs Service reported to business representatives on the first steps of the administration reform being carried out by the service. We were talking about services that simplify the provision of permits to customs, such as the “personal account” of a foreign trade participant. However, so far the automation of data exchange between departments does not save entrepreneurs from additional checks. Among the particularly problematic was the situation with currency control in export-import transactions.
NOVO-OGAREVO, October 25. /TASS/. The merger of the Federal Customs and Tax Services is justified, says the head of the Federal Customs Service, Vladimir Bulavin.
“Is the merger of customs and the Federal Tax Service into one block justified and does it produce results?” - Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Bulavin during a working meeting. “Under the auspices and coordinating role of the Ministry of Finance, it is justified, and there are already very concrete results; we intend to further increase the pace of our joint actions,” noted the head of the Federal Customs Service.
According to him, specialists from both services are actively working this year “to create a unified mechanism for administering tax and customs payments.” “This process involves the integration of our information resources, the interface of claims management systems, the coordination of actions to categorize business objects, the introduction of mechanisms for the traceability of goods and end-to-end control, as well as joint and coordinated verification activities, especially for such a customs procedure as control after the release of goods.” , - listed Bulavin.
He cited the first results of joint verification activities: “514 verification activities have already been carried out, additional customs duties have been assessed in the amount of 1.5 billion rubles.” “According to the Federal Customs Service of Russia, the tax authorities also assessed an additional amount of more than 1.9 million rubles,” Bulavin added.
The head of the Federal Customs Service assured that “interaction occurs not only at the level of central departments, but also at the level of district departments, and, most importantly, at the level of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.”
“Good,” Putin assessed.
Optimization of customs procedures
Vladimir Bulavin reported to Vladimir Putin on the optimization of customs procedures for participants in foreign economic activity (FEA).
During a meeting with the head of state, Bulavin noted that his immediate task is to “implement the plan for transferring customs duties to the federal budget, promoting foreign trade, improving the business and investment climate in the country, creating comfortable conditions in the customs sphere for participants in foreign economic activity.”
He expressed confidence that customs should be fast in terms of completing customs procedures, “smart,” that is, digitized, with access to the necessary information resources, and effective in terms of filling the budget. At the same time, according to him, “the further development of customs authorities is directly related to the development of telecommunications and information systems.”
Bulavin reported that today almost 100% of customs declarations are issued electronically, with the exception of cases specifically stipulated by acts of the Cabinet of Ministers. As a rule, declaration occurs using such an information resource as the Personal Account of a participant in foreign economic activity.
According to Bulavin, the introduction of preliminary information about imported goods by road or rail has made it possible to significantly reduce the time of customs operations: at railway checkpoints - up to two hours, at road checkpoints - up to 18 minutes.
The agency is also experimenting with the issues of automatic registration of declarations and automatic release. “We register every third export declaration automatically. This has led to a significant reduction in the time of customs operations during imports,” the official reported to the president. Thus, now the time for completing customs operations when importing is 1 hour 35 minutes, which is 30 times faster than in 2013; when exporting, the duration of the procedure has been reduced by 5 times - to 47 minutes, Bulavin clarified.
Over the nine months of this year, the Federal Customs Service transferred 3.156 billion rubles to the federal budget, which is 3% more than planned. “All planned values were fulfilled in full. 3 trillion 156 billion rubles were transferred to the federal budget revenues (for nine months), this is 103% of the target figures of the Ministry of Finance,” added the head of the Federal Customs Service.
By the end of 2016, the department expects to fulfill the plan of 4.358 billion rubles in revenues to the federal budget. Deputy head of the department Ruslan Davydov announced this on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.
“We are fulfilling the plan, and based on the results of three quarters, today, almost 3.5 trillion rubles have been collected (since the beginning of 2016 - editor’s note) by the Federal Customs Service to the budget of the Russian Federation,” he said, clarifying that the planned target for the end of the year - 4.358 trillion rubles.
“We hope to at least fulfill it,” Davydov added.
High-ranking officials have again returned to discussing the idea of merging the two main budget-replenishing departments - the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Customs Service. First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov proposed resolving this issue by May 2018, citing the positive world practice of functioning of a single fiscal authority. Let us recall that both departments are under the wing of the Ministry of Finance, and a partial information exchange has been established between them; work is underway to create a unified mechanism for administering customs, tax and other payments. What are the prospects for this work, is it necessary to merge the Federal Customs Service and the Federal Tax Service and how will it affect participants in foreign trade activities? Representatives of the business community shared their opinions on this matter.
So far, work on the Unified Information System is going neither shaky nor slow: here and there annoying little things are discovered, implementation deadlines are postponed. As PROVED said, the Main Scientific Innovation Implementation Center of the Federal Tax Service (GNIVTs FTS) did not prepare on time and did not submit the necessary changes to the action plan of the TsITTU FCS, which resulted in the failure of the timely implementation of the state contract of the Ministry of Finance dated April 25, 2016 “Development of a project for a unified customs mechanism and tax administration, as well as currency control, based on the creation and application of integrated information and telecommunication technologies of federal executive authorities subordinate to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.”
The Comprehensive Program for the Development of the Federal Customs Service until 2020 only includes such goals as organizing interaction between the Federal Customs Service of Russia and the Federal Tax Service of Russia, including the creation of a single mechanism system and the refinement of software for the Unified Automated Information System of Customs Authorities for the purpose of interfacing (convergence) and integration of information systems of the Federal Customs Service Russia and the Federal Tax Service of Russia.
The creation of a unified system for the two departments was discussed back in 2015, but there are still no impressive results to speak of. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine how much time, effort and money will have to be spent on full-scale integration of the two departments.
− With regard to the creation of a Unified Information System of two departments, an obvious advantage for the state is greater control over the entire chain of cargo passage from border crossing to sale and over the persons providing this chain. Theoretically, this should help eliminate such sensitive problems for business as confirmation of the export of goods abroad for VAT refund upon export, double taxation of companies when additional VAT is charged based on the results of an audit at the post-release stage. It will become more difficult for unscrupulous participants in foreign trade activities to “play” on cases of different calculation of VAT on imported cargo by customs and tax services, explains Vitaly Survillo, vice-president of Business Russia and head of the working group of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) on the road map “Improving customs administration."
− Representatives of four business associations have repeatedly raised the issue of the gradual transfer of VAT administration when crossing the border to tax control authorities. By establishing end-to-end control over the goods being moved and the persons involved in this, perhaps the main problem of release - the adjustment of customs value - can be eliminated. If only customs duty is paid at the border (on average 6% of the value of the goods in 2018), and VAT will be paid in the manner prescribed by tax legislation, there is no point for a foreign trade participant to underestimate the declared value upon import, because this will mean an increase of 20 percent income tax (the difference between the import value and the selling price). If the CCC problem disappears, the share of gray imports will be significantly reduced, customs clearance will become simpler and faster, the number of legal proceedings with all the associated costs will decrease, and the FCS, I dare to assume, will have freed up resources to perform other tasks.
The risks of a cash gap, which are constantly cited by opponents of our proposal, are significantly reduced during the gradual transition to the new system (first for the most “risky goods”) and are more than compensated by obvious advantages for the budget - the resulting increase in income (20% income tax is significantly more significant for the budget, rather than a 6% duty, which is also divided among all participants of the EAEU), reducing “shadow business” and reducing indirect costs (justification of customs value, legal costs, etc.), the expert concludes.
“The joint work of the Federal Customs Service and the Federal Tax Service is already showing the effectiveness of interaction - an increase in budget revenues,” assures Denis Karpenko, General Director of Cargopost. − The process of integrating information systems of departments has been launched. What can carriers expect from the creation of a unified fiscal system? Most likely, there will be no big changes. The process of merging the two departments is intended, first of all, to unify their activities. Which in turn should optimize control over transactions and commodity flows, in particular, post-control and collection. Joint administration of payments will reduce administrative barriers when determining customs value and speed up the customs clearance procedure.
But on the issue of VAT refund for exports, the head of the company does not share the point of view of Vitaly Survillo:
− The time frame for VAT refunds is unlikely to be significantly reduced, since the tax authorities are introducing additional verification mechanisms. For example, Art. 54.1 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, which determines the rules for recognizing the validity of a tax benefit. There are no plans for changes in technical regulations and reforms in the near future, so it is premature to talk about introducing additional fees. All payments are specified in the new Customs Code and Federal Law. The introduction of such measures as a single personal account by the Federal Customs Service will facilitate the payment and transfer of customs duties.
In general, a unified information system of the Federal Customs Service and the Federal Tax Service should make all processes more open and speed them up. So far, without reforming the customs control function, the merger is seen more as an organizational decision of fiscal administration, which is unlikely to greatly change or greatly facilitate the activities of participants in foreign trade activities.
Timur Davitashvili, director of customs operations at the logistics company DAXER, sees the merger of the Federal Customs Service and the Federal Tax Service as meaningless:
− I believe that the merger of the Federal Customs Service and the Federal Tax Service is not particularly necessary, since the functions of the tax and customs services are very different. Each has its own specifics and many subtleties. The Federal Tax Service covers all citizens of the country and companies. The customs service is limited to participants in foreign economic activity and a small percentage of individuals who move goods across the border of the Customs Union. By combining such large structures, the result is perhaps the largest service with a huge field of activity. In this case, it will be very difficult to organize work. It is always easier to control the process in smaller structures. If you need to transfer the fiscal function to the Federal Tax Service, then this can be done without merger. This is how things stand now with the payment of vehicle recycling fees. It is not paid into customs accounts. And creating a common information base for foreign trade participants, in my opinion, is not a problem, taking into account current technologies. For example, banks already receive customs declarations electronically through official channels.
For market participants, this innovation can have a positive impact if they introduce one personal account on the “unified service” portal. Therefore, I believe that such simplification is not essential for doing business. There is no certainty that the merger will allow faster reimbursement of VAT or paid security for customs duties. From the point of view of control over participants in foreign trade activities, perhaps this will simplify the task. Although no one is stopping you from giving the Federal Tax Service access to the FCS customs database without a merger and establishing the exchange of information between services in a simplified, high-speed mode. As practice shows, any global changes always lead to the emergence of new problems. And the merger of such serious services for the country’s budget will certainly not take place without consequences for all parties involved in the process.
AI "PROVED"
By May 2018, the government must decide on the issue of merging the tax and customs services. This was stated by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov at the Federal Tax Service board. For many officials present in the hall, this came as a surprise, Vedomosti writes.
The idea is not new: the last time such a discussion ended was in 2015 with the decision to create a unified information system of the two services and transfer the Federal Customs Service and the Federal Tax Service under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance. What is the point of uniting tax and customs officials?
Igor Yurgens President of the All-Russian Union of Insurers, Vice-President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs “In recent years, the Federal Tax Service has really become digitized, understandable to the consumer. Each person, if he wanted it, received a personal account, he understands when and how much to pay taxes. Moreover, the information systems of the Federal Tax Service are very strong, penetrating into every period of economic life. From this point of view, there is nothing technologically new in the calculations carried out by the Federal Customs Service. Of course, it should still have border points, crossings and other infrastructure, but the headquarters for managing the flows controlled by the Federal Customs Service is practically the same as that of the Federal Tax Service. In this sense, the merger seems very logical to me. Separately, I would like to say very kind words regarding the head of the Federal Tax Service Mishustin. It is understandable to all entrepreneurs, and this is the key to the success of a potential merger. The idea of reducing the bureaucracy is in the air. I would like to remind you that, in percentage terms, the bureaucratic apparatus that we currently maintain is twice, if not four times larger than in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, over 70 years of communicating with each other, people realized that this was a weight that was unbearable. Therefore, almost every four years, the State Planning Committee of the USSR, together with the Central Committee of the CPSU, reduced staff by 10% by order. Today they have grown to incredible proportions, and then I won’t tell you about “flashing lights”, 13th salaries, social packages. It's almost unbearable. If the rules are clear to business - and with the Federal Tax Service they are now absolutely clear, if there is trust - and it arises, of course, business will only applaud and throw caps into the air.”
Georgiy Ostapkovich Director of the Center for Market Research at the Higher School of Economics “At the first stage, I think this will bring some negative results, as we always do when management changes occur, there is vacillation and negative turbulence. But, in principle, if they organize, and I think it is possible to organize work within six months, then from the point of view of tax administration this can have a positive effect. Now the problem is not only that there are not enough funds, but that there are not enough administrative functions for collecting taxes. Even in the current situation, you can collect 10-15%, even 20% more. But the administration process is sometimes carried out poorly. Therefore, I would not say that this association will solve any problems in raising funds right now, but if everything goes well organizationally, then this can make a positive contribution to the country’s budget.”
The heads of both services opposed the merger of the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Customs Service, federal officials told Vedomosti. As Vladimir Bulavin, head of the Federal Customs Service, said in an interview with the publication in October, some countries followed this path, but, for example, in Canada, after a few years, the services were again divided.