New Russian Plan For World Tax Proletariat

by Tatiana Smolenska, Tax-News.com, Moscow

19 October 2001

Russians are very practical. Instead of introducing ambitious laws to tax income from non-resident savings accounts, which fall flat on their face because there is no collection mechanism, as is currently happening in the EU, Russia is instead craftily suggesting a unified world data-base of information about businesses.

At a news conference in Moscow on Thursday, Russian Tax Minister Gennadiy Bukayev suggested the data-base in order to make global cash flows more transparent, and said Russia aims to encourage world tax authorities to unite. As the first step, the Russian Tax Ministry has proposed creating a unified data system that would contain information about all businesses in the Commonwealth of Independent States, he said.

The Russian tax minister said he saw serious reasons for closer cooperation between the tax authorities worldwide, not just inside the CIS. He pointed out that one of the most serious reasons was the globalization of cash flows.

Bukayev recalled that 15 to 20 million people arrived in Russia from other CIS countries annually to do business and their incomes and tax payments were beyond the Russian and other authorities' control. If the proposed system is established, every single businessman will have to register with the territorial tax inspectorate of the countries visited and pay all due taxes.

Senior officials from the tax and customs authorities of all CIS countries would gather at the end of January 2002 to discuss tax legislation unification and measures to enhance cooperation, Bukayev said.

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