Shareholders will be equalized in personal income tax – Kommersant

On Wednesday, the State Duma will consider in the second reading a bill that equalizes the right to exemption from personal income tax of defrauded equity holders who receive reimbursement through federal and regional mechanisms. Now, citizens who have suffered from developers, when receiving such compensation, are forced to pay a 13 percent tax on it as on income – even if we are talking about receiving not only money, but also compensatory apartments. Experts support the idea, noting that there should be no legal gaps due to which equity holders who have paid money for housing must also pay tax.

The bill, which exempts equity holders from personal income tax, whose rights to housing are restored with the help of regional mechanisms, was approved for adoption in the second reading by the budget committee of the State Duma – on June 17, the document will be considered at a plenary meeting. Let us clarify that the current Tax Code exempts income received by citizens in the form of compensation from personal income tax in accordance with the law on the Territorial Development Fund (previously called the Fund for the Protection of the Rights of Shareholders). We are talking about monetary compensation paid if the problematic house is decided not to be completed or the equity holder refuses to wait for the completion of this process.

With this wording, equity holders who receive compensation not from the fund, but from the authorities of the region, have an obligation to pay this tax. The problem is especially acute in the case of obtaining compensatory housing. It is regarded as income received in kind, and a citizen must also pay personal income tax on it, which is obviously more difficult than when receiving a cash payment. The issue required clarification from the Federal Tax Service – it confirmed that apartments received under regional mechanisms, according to the current version of the Tax Code, are not income exempt from personal income tax. Giving such an explanation, the Federal Tax Service said that it had proposed to the Ministry of Finance to provide for tax exemption for such cases as well.

As a result, the parliamentary bill adopted by the State Duma includes in the list of income not subject to personal income tax, compensation received through regional mechanisms for the restoration of the rights of equity holders. The government gave a positive response to the document, but indicated that the tax relief should be applied on the condition that the shareholder does not have the right to a refund under the law on the Territorial Development Fund. For the second reading, as follows from the words of Olga Anufriyeva, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Budget Committee, it was clarified that “support for release must be provided on one basis: either under the federal part, or under the legislation of the subject.”

It should be noted that the predominant part of cases of restoration of the rights of equity holders falls on regional mechanisms. As Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin previously reported, in January-April of this year, the rights of 11 thousand equity holders were restored, of which 7 thousand were done through regional mechanisms. According to the Territorial Development Fund, this year 57 houses were put into operation, which were completed as problematic. Of these, 27 were built with the help of regional mechanisms and are intended for 1.3 thousand defrauded equity holders.

Dmitry Kletochkin, partner at Rustam Kurmaev & Partners law firm, notes that the project is designed to balance the functionality of federal and local legislation in terms of interpreting compensation both in monetary terms and in the form of property compensation and considers their receipt by citizens as a single function to protect the rights of equity holders. In his opinion, there really should not be a gap in legal regulation, when the affected equity holders must also pay tax. “In fact, citizens exchanged their money for housing, and if this housing was transferred not by the developer, but in some intricate way from the region or an authorized person, income cannot arise,” the expert notes.

Evgenia Kryuchkova