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Executive Director of the Gaidar Institute Sergey Prikhodko offered his comments in an interview with Kommersant FM.

Aleksey Vedev, Leading Researcher, Financial Studies Department, gave a comment to “Gazeta.ru”.

International tax relations go through ambivalent period in their long history. Countries continue to uphold the position to maintain international tax competitiveness while agreements concluded of double tax evasion are subjected more often to criticism for “encouraging” tax base erosion.

Experts of the Gaidar Institute commented to “Izvestia” on the situation related to mothballed state projects discovered by Accounts Chamber.der

Development of an effective tax system is a critical prerequisite of economic growth, improvement of investment and business climate in Russia.

Sergey Tsukhlo, Head of IEP Business Survey Department, commented data of the May survey of industrialists to “Economy and life” periodical.

Commentary on the RBC article “For the first time Rosstat disclosed share of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Russian economy”:

The aggregate volume of the main segments of the Russian e-business market estimated at Rb 1,357.3bn, Rb 2,031.2bn and Rb 2,347.0bn in 2013, 2015 and 2016, respectively, keeps growing.  It is to be noted that in Russia growth rates of various sectors of e-business are much higher than those of the economy as a whole.

The draft federal budget for 2019 and the 2020-2021 planned period submitted by the Russian Government to the Parliament suggests utilization of funds received from the privatization of federal property as a separate source of the federal budget deficit funding.

Special tax regulations for freelancers, i.e. individuals making their living on their own without engaging labor could be introduced in Russia already in 2019.

In September 2018, the Government of Russia submitted a draft of the federal law envisaging evaluation of the shortfall in budget revenues from tax breaks and exemption as well as their control in the budgetary process along with direct budgetary expenditures, to the State Duma of the Russian Federation. These amounts will be accounted as tax expenditures.

The Government suggested to raise the value added tax (VAT) from 18 to 20% as from January 2019.

Starting 2019, agricultural taxpayers will become VAT payers as well, required amendments to the chapters 21 and 26.1 of the RF Tax Code have been drafted and are about to come into effect.

A license-withdrawing process and procedures for rehabilitation of large Russian banks, such as FK Otkrytie, the Binbank and the Promsvyazbank resulted in worsening of the competition in the banking sector in 2017.

The draft law on anti-US sanctions will be considered by the State Duma before the end of the spring session. The document will permit the government to introduce a ban or limitations on imports to Russia of agricultural products, food, raw products, medicine (except for preparations which have no Russian analogs), alcohol, tobacco and other US-made goods. Also, the initiative calls for introduction of limitations on cooperation in the nuclear industry, rocket and engine building industry, as well as the aircraft industry.

Numerous researchers declare that a new industrial revolution has begun. Development of modern technologies and introduction of robots may cause sporadic growth in technological unemployment.