A joint tax authority has appeared in the union state of Belarus and Russia

He will control the interaction between the structures of the two countries

As Dmitry Mezentsev, Secretary of State of the Union State, reported on November 10, the document on the creation of a supranational tax authority was signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

The decision to create such a body was made a year ago – in October 2022. The ultimate goal of this process should be the creation of uniform tax conditions in the two countries. The supranational body will monitor the elimination of tax barriers in mutual trade, ensuring the integrity of the fiscal base of countries and the formation of a single information space for cooperation and mutual assistance of tax authorities.

In addition, an integrated system for administering indirect taxes will be created, where information on the transactions of VAT payers of two countries registered with the tax authorities as of January 1, 2023 will be entered. It will be used to analyze value added tax data.

Let us recall that the Union State plans to jointly develop 28 Union programs. According to the head of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Maxim Reshetnikov, today 13 of them have already been fully implemented. The completed tasks include three programs from the financial sector, which relate to the harmonization of currency legislation and control, the fight against money laundering, and the financing of terrorism. The unification of accounting has also been successfully completed.

The implemented programs also include programs in the field of information control systems. As the Ambassador of Belarus to Russia Dmitry Krutoy previously said, thanks to the joint traceability program, “our Ministry of Taxes and Duties has already received information on 5.9 thousand goods that have signs of counterfeit entering our market.”

As a result, the system makes it possible to prevent non-payment of taxes, suppress cases of falsification and the entry of low-quality goods into the consumer market. Another information system has been introduced in the field of phytosanitary and veterinary control. It increases the level of trust between the relevant services of the two countries and influences the order of supplies of certain types of agricultural products and food products from Belarus to the Russian market, and vice versa.

Among those completed there is also a program on nuclear energy. Unified rules of competition have also come into force. “The corresponding agreement has been signed. The regulatory framework has been unified at the level of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia and our MART. Therefore, the program was also considered successful,” said the ambassador.