Russian senators are exploring the possibility of developing national legislation in the area of taxation of global Internet companies such as Facebook or Google. This was announced by Senator Alexei Pushkov on Friday, December 17.
The issue is being dealt with by the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy and Interaction with the Media, together with the departments concerned.
“We discussed this issue at a meeting of our commission and started preparing proposals regarding the future national legislation in the field of taxation of global Internet companies. At present, an international convention is being drafted through the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. – Ed.), But the work on it has not yet been completed. In these conditions, we proceed from the fact that the most reasonable position is to start developing national legislation without waiting for a convention, ”Pushkov told TASS as chairman of the commission.
He specified that France, Turkey, Australia and several other countries have followed the same path. The senator also believes that this work also requires the participation of such departments as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Tax Service and Roskomnadzor.
“Internet platforms do not appear with us now as a separate object of taxation. When they open their offices in Russia within the framework of the law on “landing”, the question will arise how their official presence on the territory of Russia, which does not exist now, will correlate with our tax regime. We are now considering how to establish this relationship, ”he said.
Now they themselves share data on the profits of IT giants, and therefore Russia, according to the senator, needs its own system for calculating their income, which “will make it possible to determine their real taxable base.”
“More than 90% of the income of these companies in Russia comes from advertising. We are quite capable of calculating the advertising that our advertisers send to certain Internet platforms, ”said the chairman of the Federation Council commission and clarified that while the issue of making the necessary changes to the legislation is only at the first stage of study.
On December 16, a magistrate court in Moscow fined Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) an additional 13 million rubles for refusing to remove content prohibited in the Russian Federation, the total amount of the fine imposed by Russian courts since the beginning of the year amounted to 83 million rubles.
On December 3, Roskomnadzor reported that social networks Meta (Facebook), TikTok, as well as the Google search engine have been fined more than 110 million rubles since the beginning of the year for not removing content prohibited in Russia. According to the agency, to date, TikTok has paid the assigned fines in full, while Facebook has paid eight fines for a total of 26 million rubles.
On February 1, a law came into force in Russia, according to which social networks must themselves identify and block prohibited content. In the absence of an opportunity to independently assess the unlawfulness of the content within 24 hours, the administration of the social network must send the data to Roskomnadzor.
Source: IZ
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
