The Russian Ministry of Economic Development intends to hybridize the tax on financial results (NFR) with an additional income (TAI) in the oil industry, the head of department Alexey Ulyukayev said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
"The main aim of the tax (NFR) is to align conditions for investors at various stages of fields, increase oil recovery from wells because there is a stage when you invest a lot in the field, and receive little. There is a stage when you can stop investing, but continue to receive profits. The Ministry of Finance is afraid of receiving less income, which is why we decided to polish the first mechanism in the form of a "pilot" on half dozen fields, mainly old ones,'' Interfax cites him as saying.
"The deposits in Eastern Siberia should receive grant tax allowance. They give nothing to the budget, and the shelf won't bring us any profits either. In fact, we receive income from the oil extracted in Western Siberia. Profitability is low there, about 12-14%, and this is the maximum of its efficiency. We also need to constantly invest and maintain its production,'' the minister said.
"Maybe we should think about a cross between the tax on financial results with the new version of the tax on extra income. Once it was proposed and focused on new fields," Ulyukayev said.
The head of the Department of Management Graduate School (VSHGU) at RANHiGS, Ilya Bykovnikov, said in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaz that "today's tax system has been established more or less. It also adequately reflects the situation in the oil industry."
"There are two taxes: the tax on the extraction of minerals and, therefore, an income tax. We can propose a holiday tax to improve the efficiency of the sphere, for example, the MET, or any reduction factors for organizations if they correspond to certain criteria and demands. At the same time, it is possible to levy a tax on profits," he believes.
According to the Deputy Director at the Energy and Finance Institute Alexei Belogorev, "the proposal by the Ministry of Energy is the most compatible of the variants among those announced by companies in recent years. Many new projects and investment deposits are simply unattractive without a transition taxation of financial results, not revenues from oil sales, because they don't provide even a minimum level of profitability of the company."
