Depositors of more than 1.6 million rubles will face a new tax at the end of the year

I’ll have to share

Revenues to the treasury from individuals paying personal income tax on income from bank deposits next year will definitely exceed 100 billion rubles. This statement from the head of the Federal Tax Service, Daniil Egorov, is directly related to the fact that Russians with deposits of 1.6 million rubles or more will have to pay such a tax for the first time at the end of 2023. Experts interviewed by MK differed in their assessments: some do not see anything bad in what is happening, pointing to the letter of the law, others believe that against the backdrop of growing inflation, the state should not disincentivize citizens to save.

The law, according to which interest on bank deposits of individuals is subject to personal income tax at a standard rate of 13%, has been in force in Russia since 2021, but both then and in 2022, depositors were exempted from payment due to the pandemic and sanctions. It concerns a person’s total interest income for the year on all deposits in Russian banks, minus the “body” of the deposit. The tightening of monetary policy by the Central Bank led to a decrease in the number of payers. Initially, persons with total deposits of 1 million rubles or more were subject to the new tax. But after the regulator raised the key rate to 15% in October, the amount for tax calculation is now 150 thousand rubles, and the deposit subject to personal income tax must be no less than 1.665 million rubles. That is, since the beginning of the year, the taxable amount has doubled, since the key rate in January was 7.5%.

It is also important that when calculating the tax base, both urgent interest and savings and other accounts are taken into account. For deposits in foreign currency, income is recalculated into rubles at the Central Bank exchange rate. But even under all these conditions, the tax will affect only about 1% of depositors – those “lucky ones” whose deposits amount to millions of rubles. Using it, the authorities plan to collect 312 billion rubles in three years: in 2024 – 101 billion, in 2025 – 104 billion, in 2026 – 107 billion. As the head of the Federal Customs Service Daniil Egorov noted, “now with the growth of the key rate we We get an increase in profitability on deposits, this will also be reflected in the result.”

As for the contribution to the federal budget, of course, the figure of 101 billion looks very modest against the backdrop of the expected revenue of 35.06 trillion rubles in 2024. But this macroeconomic point does not play a special role. According to financial analyst, candidate of economic sciences Mikhail Belyaev, in this case the state is guided by the letter of the law: if you have income, you should pay tax on it, regardless of the type and source of origin. Whether it’s interest on a bank deposit or something else is not the point.

“There are several key nuances here,” explains MK’s interlocutor. — The good news is that it is not the deposit itself that is taxed, but only the income from it. The bad thing is that the calculation takes into account not just one account, but a set of deposits (both in rubles and in foreign currency) opened with one individual in different banks. Interest income on them is summed up. And this is a fundamental difference from the deposit insurance system, which allows you to spread 1.4 million state-insured rubles across at least ten credit institutions, and nothing will happen to this money. However, no 13% personal income tax will be deducted from you if your total income on all accounts is less than 150 thousand.”

In addition, Belyaev argues, the tax on interest on bank deposits cannot in any way be considered an example of double taxation, since we are talking about new income. Let’s say you were paid for the work done, you paid personal income tax on this amount, then you put this money “cleared” of tax into the bank and received completely new income. And that’s what you pay personal income tax on.

“Any tax deduction is, naturally, a deviation from the current key rate and is clearly not the best news for the population,” says Alexey Vedev, head of the Center for Structural Research at RANEPA. — In what is happening, I see a typical approach from the Ministry of Finance – “everything for the budget”, aimed at tightening the system of fiscal levies. Well, yes, the chicken pecks every grain, but annual revenues to the treasury in the amount of 100 billion rubles do not make any difference. But they definitely disincentivize the savings of Russians in any organized form – in the form of bank deposits, investments in bonds, and so on. And this is against the backdrop of rising inflation! Let me also remind you that in October the government introduced a bill to the State Duma that would abolish the three-year investment tax benefit for the sale of foreign securities traded on Russian stock exchanges. Accordingly, if previously profits of this kind were exempt from tax, this will no longer be the case.”

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29162 dated November 22, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Rich investors will have to share