Putin asked the government to think about introducing VAT on purchases in foreign online stores

The dreams of the Association of Internet Trading Companies ( ACIT ) about strangling remote purchases by Russians from abroad are getting closer to sbochi. RBC today drew attention to one of the items that appeared on November 5 list of Putin's instructions to the government. The quotation from the list of assignments , translated from official to human, reads as follows:

The President instructed the Government to consider the question of imposing purchases from foreign online retailers of VAT and tax duties.

It is the division of parcels from overseas stores into two streams: the green and red corridor. Parcels from stores that register as tax agents in the Russian Federation will go into the green corridor, will immediately indicate the price with 18% VAT and pay it to the Russian budget. If for some reason the store ignored the proposal of the Russian authorities to pay VAT to our treasury, then the parcels from it will go along the “red corridor”, in which the VAT and God knows what other fees will fall on the buyer himself.

As an example of what a buyer might expect, whose package went along the red corridor, AKIT President Alexei Fyodorov cited the UK, which in this case also pays the tax duty, VAT, and a special tax from the parcel. cleaning. "

So, if you go back to the text of Putin’s instructions above, you will notice that there, besides VAT, tax duties are mentioned - that is, That same kind of old idea that Russian speculators have been persistently trying to push through the Internet for online shopping for two years: to reduce the threshold for the value of parcels not subject to duties.
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There are three ways out of this situation: neutral, bad and catastrophic.

The neutral scenario means that the Government will carefully consider this proposal and will not change anything. Foreign online stores don’t know that they wanted to be forced to pay taxes to the Russian budget, and citizens can continue to make remote purchases without duties up to € 1,000 abroad.

The bad scenario is simply the introduction of VAT as such.

1. At least, of course, all parcels automatically rise in price by at least 18%. Fedorov's words that the introduction of VAT, as a rule, “does not affect consumers, only shops will have to sacrifice margin” from the point of view of common sense is difficult to explain. Either I don’t understand what he says, or he doesn’t understand what he says, or he simply lies: firstly, where did he even see in Western Internet stores a margin of more than 18%? Secondly, where did he get that someone would refuse the margin for the sake of the Russian buyer in general? And thirdly, since when 18% is “a little”?
2. A significant part of the US-based mail traffic will automatically fall into the “red corridor”, because if they don’t want to pay VAT or even actively try to prevent them from being sent to Russia, they will not even be registered as tax agents in the Russian Federation.
3. Purchases with eBay are questionable - of course, the sellers from there will not be registered by tax agents in the Russian Federation, but if their quarterly revenue is less than $ 2 million, then, at the suggestion of ACIT , it is not necessary for them to get up for tax accounting. However, 90% of the purchases according to their own data still come from large stores.
4. In the red corridor, customers will have to deal directly with our customs, which, unlike the same “Russian Post”, is completely in no hurry to change for the better and become friendlier to the citizen.

And, finally, a catastrophic option: if additional fees and a reduction in the duty-free threshold for purchases in the red corridor are added to VAT, i.e. up to 90% of all parcels:

1. The market of remote purchases abroad will significantly decline. How much - will depend on the duty-free threshold. If the AKIT’s blue dream comes true about € 22 per month, it’s somewhere down to zero.
2. Of course, he will kill the market of mail forwarders, including Pochtoy.com , in whose blog you are reading this news. But at the same time, the investments of recent years in imparting human features to the face of the Post of Russia will be devalued - without the actual customers with parcels from abroad, all this will be wasted money.

Mail will be against

By the way, the factor of the “Post of Russia” is one of the reasons why the ideas of ACIT still did not go beyond words. Appreciate the irony: one of the most unloved institutions of our state, according to tradition, may actually be the last frontier between us and attempts to deprive us of the opportunity to buy quality goods at prices of civilized countries.

And all because for PR, Russian foreign purchases are an important part of the business. In January-September, the volume of international mailings of the Post of Russia increased almost twice as compared with 2015; and for several years in a row, PR has been demonstrating profitability - so the killing of the market for private purchases abroad is very painful for it, too. That is why the government can leave everything as it is this time, even though Putin has asked.

The time for consideration of this issue by the government is given until December 31, so we will find out which of the above scenarios it will be within two months.

Buy while you can:


Traditionally, there is a $ 5 discount coupon for Pochtoy from the USA for all those who read this far: supergeek .