They decided to “punish” oil workers for rising gasoline prices: they proposed imposing a new tax

It will replenish the budget by approximately 200 billion rubles

A group of State Duma deputies proposed imposing an excess profit tax on oil and gas companies, which many representatives of large businesses will have to pay in January. The authors of the idea believe that such a fiscal maneuver will be fair and will bring an additional 200 billion rubles to the budget. It is possible that the idea of ​​skimming another portion of the cream from the oil bigwigs also has another goal: to demonstrate to oil workers what punishment they will suffer for the uncontrolled rise in fuel prices.

The Law “On Excess Profit Tax,” signed by Vladimir Putin in early August, will come into force in 2024, and payments will need to be made to the state no later than January 28. Companies whose average profit for 2021 and 2022 exceeded 1 billion rubles are subject to a one-time tax. The tax rate will be 10% of the excess profit for this period over the same figure for 2018-2019. If the fiscal fee is paid in advance (from October 1 to November 30 this year), then the tax rate can be halved – to 5%.

According to the current version of the law, in addition to the oil and gas sector, miners, small and medium-sized businesses, farmers, some developers, problematic financial organizations and companies that actively invested in past years are exempt from such fiscal payment. Experts believe that metallurgists and fertilizer producers will have to pay the most. Taking into account enterprises extracting solid minerals (for example, ores), in total they will have to provide more than half of the excess profit tax. Officials expect to receive approximately 12% of fiscal revenues from wholesale and retail trade, and another 9% from banks.

Not all legislators agree with this tax collection scheme. A group of deputies who proposed changing the system approved by the president believes that for a more equitable distribution of the fiscal burden, it is necessary to include the extractive energy sector in paying the duty. In addition, if the Ministry of Finance now expects to replenish the budget by 300 billion rubles through the excess profit tax, then with the participation of oil and gas giants, additional treasury revenues will increase to 500 billion.

According to Dmitry Aleksandrov, head of the analytical research department at IVA Partners, there is logic in the current proposal of the deputies. In fact, commodity companies have already received some additional income from rising world energy prices, as well as due to the devaluation of the national currency. Moreover, the revenue of hydrocarbon producers, who are restoring foreign supplies and reducing discounts on their raw materials, is increasing. In the first half of this year, the average profit of just four leading Russian mining holdings amounted to about 1.7 trillion rubles.

At the same time, the production and sale of hydrocarbons continue to provide about a third of our country’s budget and are regulated by many government or departmental regulations. In July, officials adopted a bill that halved payments for fuel dampers, and in September they completely introduced a restriction (read ban) on the export of gasoline and diesel fuel. The reason for this decision was the need to stabilize prices on the domestic market – as a result, quotes, for example, for tons of AI-92, which had risen in price from early July to mid-September from 55 thousand to 70 thousand rubles, immediately collapsed by about 20%. “Constantly changing tax regulations is a risky endeavor, especially in relation to an industry that is already under constant pressure from uncertainty in the form of Western sanctions restrictions,” notes Alexandrov.

In this regard, experts believe that the proposed bill may be shelved. If such a document is nevertheless approved, then, according to Natalya Milchakova, a leading analyst at Freedom Finance Global, the largest oil companies will be the first to suffer: they will be forced to reduce or even refuse to pay dividends next year. Additional fiscal obligations will negatively affect investment policy and the implementation of new projects.

However, in private conversations, many experts also put forward a conspiracy theory about the purpose of the initiative to burden oil workers with a tax on excess profits, which they barely managed to fight off recently: it is possible that the authorities are demonstrating what kind of “punishment” the fuel magnates can expect, continuing to raise the cost of fuel.