[Goldfisch]

Russian Finance Ministry Wants to Tax Oil Companies’ Super-Profits
Created: 13.10.2004 16:51 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:01 MSK, 3 hours 39 minutes ago

Russia’s Finance Ministry announced that it deems it necessary to introduce a special tax on oil companies’ super-profits. The announcement was made on Wednesday, Oct. 13, at an international tax conference organized in Moscow by the PriceWaterhouseCoopers audit and consulting company.

Mikhail Motorin from the Finance Ministry told delegates at the conference that the Russian government has already discussed the introduction of such a tax, meaning an additional income tax levied on profits received from oil extraction. Additional income tax is meant to stimulate the oil companies to invest in the development of new deposits. Such a system of taxation is used in many countries, said the government official, adding that in the end Russia will “come to use this system as well”.

Motorin also said that the introduction of the additional income tax is aimed at solving two main tasks facing the government: to secure an inflow of investments in oil exploration and the development of new fields, and to keep the level of tax profits from the oil sector on a par with this record breaking year.

The Finance Ministry official explained that the new tax will be differentiated, taking into account such parameters as depreciation of the deposit, its water content or the size of transportation component in the production of oil. The government may also decide to introduce such a novelty as “royalty vacation” when no additional income tax will be levied in the first stage of a new deposit’s development.

Quelle: MosNews