Personal income tax forward – Kommersant

A group of deputies and senators submitted to the State Duma a bill on the priority transfer to the budgets of personal income tax paid under the single tax account mechanism. Income tax and arrears on it will be received by regions and municipalities before the transfer of other mandatory payments. This innovation will be a compromise solution to the problem of delaying the receipt of personal income tax amounts that are critical for the regions, which arose during the practical application of the new tax payment scheme.

The dispute between the regions and the Ministry of Finance over the delay in the receipt of funds to the accounts of municipalities and regions, which arose after the transition to the single tax account mechanism, ended with the preparation of a compromise bill. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, in collaboration with a group of deputies and senators, submitted to the State Duma a draft amendment to the Tax Code, which establishes special conditions for transferring personal income tax to budgets. We are talking about a mechanism that came into force on January 1 this year, when all taxes are transferred to a single account in the Treasury, and the tax authorities distribute them according to budgets independently. The procedure was introduced to simplify payments and minimize errors, but caused a number of difficulties – both for taxpayers (see “Kommersant” dated January 31), and for regions and municipalities that began to complain about cash gaps in their budgets arising from untimely receipt of funds.

Personal income tax (along with income tax) is the main source of tax revenues for the regions. And, as the authors of the project write, the introduction of a single payment deadline and the diversion of personal income tax to pay off arrears on other taxes “leads to an uneven flow of funds to budgets.” Previously, the regions asked to allocate this tax as a separate payment, but the Ministry of Finance opposed this, explaining that in this case the meaning of a single account would be lost and the number of payments would increase again.

At first, the department solved the problem with advance subsidies and treasury loans at 0.1%. Later, the deadlines for the return of funds from the budget in the event of a decrease in the obligations of taxpayers were increased (not on the next day, but no later than the third day of the next month). But at the end of April, the head of the Ministry of Finance, Anton Siluanov, admitted that the department could not constantly close cash gaps with loans, and announced its readiness “to increase the rhythm of revenue receipts to regional budgets” to give priority to personal income tax over other payments in order to protect this tax from redistribution.

The introduced draft law establishes such a priority: at the beginning of the “queue” when funds are credited to the budgets, personal income tax arrears are placed, starting from the earliest moment of its occurrence, and then personal income tax itself. And after that, the sequence provided for by the Tax Code is in effect: arrears on other taxes, taxes themselves, advance payments, fees, insurance premiums, penalties, interest and fines.

At the same time, for the prompt receipt of funds to the consolidated regional budgets, it is proposed to indicate that if there is a positive balance of the UNS and if there is a notification of the calculated amounts of taxes and contributions (with information on the amount of personal income tax calculated and withheld by the tax agent), the tax authorities must enroll personal income tax without waiting for the deadline for this procedure – that is, on account of the forthcoming obligation to pay tax. At the same time, as noted in the explanatory note, “in order to avoid situations that allow the tax agent to use the funds of personal income tax withheld, but not transferred to the budget, in order to fulfill their obligations, the abolition of such an automatic set-off at the request of the tax agent itself is not provided.”

Evgenia Kryuchkova