The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation exempted the colonel’s family from taxes for the sold apartment

They wanted to recover more than one and a half million rubles from the military family

You do not need to pay tax, penalties and fines for a sold apartment if the housing was provided by the state and its owners have lived in it for more than three years. This decision was made by the Supreme Court, having considered the complaint of the reserve colonel, his wife and son against the decisions of the Pskov tax service and three lower courts.

As it became known to MK, the family received an apartment in the capital in the spring of 2016. It was provided to the military by the decision of the Pskov garrison military court, adopted back in 2008. In the fall of 2019, the family sold the apartment, and when the deadline came to submit documents to the tax service, adult family members declared income from the sale of the apartment in the amount of 0 rubles. The tax authorities soon billed them: more than 470 thousand rubles of tax from each adult family member (parents and eldest child), plus more than 11 thousand fines and fines – almost 100 thousand each. And this decision did not suit the family of the serviceman.

First, citizens filed a complaint with the Federal Tax Service for the Pskov region. She remained unsatisfied: the department decided that the decision of a lower body was lawful. Then the family appealed to the Pskov District Court, but its decision did not satisfy the plaintiffs either: they only succeeded in reducing the fine to 5,000 each. The Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation upheld this decision. But the Supreme Court did not agree with the opinion of colleagues.

The higher court indicated that the decisions of the lower courts were given on the grounds that the apartment the family had sold had not been privatized. The fact is that, according to the law, a privatized apartment can be sold after three years or more, and at the same time not declare taxes. In this case, there was no privatization, the apartment was simply given ownership. In such a situation, the military, who received state-guaranteed housing, first under a social contract of employment, and then privatized it, find themselves in unequal conditions in terms of the possibility of obtaining a tax benefit with those who received an apartment immediately into ownership. Therefore, those who immediately became the owner of housing and sold it after more than three years, do not have to pay tax.