State, business should be senior and junior partners, windfall tax a one-off - Belousov
MOSCOW. June 13 (Interfax) - The state and business should become partners, senior and junior, with work in this format already underway: entrepreneurs themselves came up with the idea of paying the windfall tax, First Deputy Russian Prime Minister Andrei Belousov said in an interview with Russian TV channels as part of the SPIEF-Club project.
The government's legislative commission recently approved a bill on a levy from windfall profits for 2021-2022 after months of discussion, and this will soon be introduced to the State Duma. The Finance Ministry expects the budget will receive 300 billion rubles from the windfall tax by the end of this year.
"I'll tell you a big secret: business and not the state came up with the idea of this tax - a windfall tax, about 300 billion rubles. They understand that they had huge windfall profits for 2021 and 2022. Simply massive. Bigger than the budget. They said guys, better for us to chip in and pay than for them to put taxes up. And then came the nuances: who should pay and how much? And it's all just a panopticon. I have a lot of respect [for the entrepreneurs]. Many of them are true patriots, no matter what people say about them. They identify very closely with the country. Not all of them, but a lot of them," RBC TV quoted Belousov as saying.
"How should the state build relations with business strategically in the new environment? I believe that we should become partners. We are taking steps in this regard. The senior partner is the state and the junior partner [is business]. Because in our conditions the state is not a night watchman and not even a balance between society and the state. The state assumes many functions of civil society. Unfortunately, this is how it has always been historically, and this is proving to be the case even more today," Belousov said.
"So there can be no equality between the state and business. But partnership, when the state and business have a mutual understanding of the goals and objectives, respect them and work on them, that's a win-win, with empathy. One works for the goals of the other, building at every moment in time some kind of consensus, through close communications - this is the model I call the partnership model. We began to develop it in 2020, since the pandemic," Belousov said.
And the state "can say what is necessary, but it must explain what is necessary and what is necessary, and it is definitely unacceptable for the state to constantly change the rules of the game without explaining anything," he said.
Asked whether businesses might want to pay a windfall tax next year as well, Belousov said that "this [windfall tax] is a one-off tax, I doubt that [businesses] will have such a desire [to pay it in 2024 as well]." "Because this year, businesses have seen their incomes plummet, at least compared to last year. Even in our forecast, the income of profitable enterprises is lower than last year. And if we take the total profit, then it is growing less than 1% at current prices. This is not very much at all [...]. We are proud to have low unemployment. But the flipside is that there is a shortage of labor. That shortage of labor is driving wages up. This is good - real incomes are growing, demand, markets are growing, but business costs are rising. So profit is falling, and this weighs on investments," Belousov said, explained why a repeat of the windfall tax episode next year is unlikely.
"So it's a question of taxes - businesses themselves must figure out what is going on. I don't think they will [offer to pay windfall tax next year]. I know that they looking at proposals. It is better for us to make decisions once, having discussed them with everyone possible - with businesses, with trade unions, with public organizations, the Duma, the Federation Council and so on. There should be a fairly broad discussion at least in terms of principles. Then carry them out and try to go at least five years without major changes," Belousov said, describing the partnership between the state and business.