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MOSCOW, May 29. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin instructed the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Federal Tax Service to consider the possibility of abolishing VAT for a number of service industries, by analogy with the mechanism adopted in relation to public catering.
In July 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law exempting public catering enterprises from VAT in 2022, whose annual revenue does not exceed 2 billion rubles a year. The measure applies to restaurants, cafes, bars, fast food establishments, buffets, cafeterias, canteens, snack bars, culinary departments at these facilities and other similar catering facilities, as well as catering.
Igor Bukharov, president of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia, proposed expanding this mechanism during a meeting of the government commission on the development of SMEs.
«The problem of barriers associated with a sharp increase in the tax burden when the threshold values for tax regimes are passed is typical not only for public catering enterprises, but also for colleagues from related industries — the service sector, fitness. In this regard, we propose to consider the possibility extend such a tax regime to other industries or introduce a special tax regime for enterprises that have lost their right to the simplified tax system,» he said.
«As for extending it to other types of economic activity, in particular, you propose extending it to hotels, fitness clubs, I think that this is possible, but everything needs to be thought through very carefully. I would ask the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Federal Tax Service to look at such enterprises,» Mishustin replied.
«Everything here is reasonable if the colleagues who deal with it have relevant problems. You remember, the main problems were getting a deduction for purchases, there were a lot of nuances related to the activities of the cafe,» the head of government added.