01.05.08

According to instructions issued by the Federal Tax Service (FTS), tax inspectors will take into account judicial opinion on the debates surrounding the Unified Social Tax (UST). Three major points mentioned by the FTS include:

• The FTS instructs all tax inspectors to abandon claims that will unavoidably lead to a defeat in court (i.e. those stemming from cases caused by a business using a prolonged civil law contract used instead of labor contract).
• The FTS cautiously suggests considering arbitration practice while preferably following opinion of the Ministry of Finance (i.e. when a company pays medical benefits up to the amount of the actual salary).
• The third point is most problematic: regardless of any court ruling, the FTS plans to assess additional UST in many cases (i.e. when a company pays severance or a compensation package to an employee at the time of discharge based on an agreement made with the employee. For accounting purposes, these payments are made from net profits thus the company need not include UST and pension tax. However, the FTS insists that if these expenses are based on a written agreement with an employee, the company must include them into its tax accounting and, consequently, pay UST.

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Source: "Учет. Налоги. Право"