No clarity with volume of windfall tax expected until late March, together with 2022 reporting - Sazanov

MOSCOW. Feb 22 (Interfax) - Clarity concerning the amount of the contribution to be paid by large companies to the budget from profits received due to price trends in 2021-2022 could appear only a month from now, state secretary and Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Sazanov told reporters.

"There are different proposals. There is a proposal from the RSPP, there is a proposal from the Finance Ministry, there are alternative proposals. When the calculation procedure is chosen, we will inform you right away. It's just has not been drawn up yet," Sazanov said when asked about the format and size of the planned contribution.

"In any case, if we factor 2022 into the calculations, we have to wait until the end of March, when reports for the year are issued in late March," the deputy minister said.

The discussion about additional taxes on businesses entered into the public domain in early February, but in fact it began at the end of last year. It was said that the volume of the tax could be 200-250 billion rubles (such estimates was made by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs), and the contribution itself would be voluntary. Businesses opposed this approach, with RSPP head Alexander Shokhin pointing out difficulties with corporate procedures. At the end of last week, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the contribution would still be implemented through tax instruments, rather than on a voluntary basis. At the same time, the minister estimated the volume at a level of 300 billion rubles.

"We think the sooner (we make a decision on the windfall tax calculation base), the better. Do you know why? Because we started with 200 billion rubles, and the more time passes, the more the Finance Ministry's appetite grows - 250, 300 (billion rubles). We think that every month there will be 50 or 100 billion additional payments," Shokhin told reporters on Tuesday.

So far, these are just estimates, Sazanov stressed.

"You can't base the payment on estimates. You have to have actual data. We will have the actual data at the end of March," he said.