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Russian Biz Apathetic to Tax Benefits
A survey by Grant Thompson International shows that Russian companies pay much less attention to tax benefits than Western companies when they think about entering foreign markets. In a poll of 7800 executives worldwide, it was found that 51 percent of entrepreneurs in the European Union stated that a lowered profits tax rate for investors is a factor in the selection of a country in which to set up a production base. In Russia, those benefits are of interest to only 28 percent of respondents. The stability of the taxation conditions is also of concern to only half as many Russian entrepreneurs as in Europe.
Tax exemption attracts Russian interest, however. Forty percent of Russian respondents expressed the desire to receive a five-year tax vacation, as compared to 50 percent in the EU. Russian entrepreneurs showed the least interest in a tax break on research and development and experimental design work. Only 6 percent of Russian respondents expressed interest in it, compared to 26 percent in the EU and 30 percent in the world as a whole. Tax benefits on capital investment interested 17 percent of Russian respondents and 41 percent of Europeans.
Sergey Aslibekyan, general director of ZAO Grant Thornton, said that the low level of interest among Russian businessmen in tax benefits in other countries shows that few Russian companies think of international-scale operations as an important step in their development. There is another possible explanation, however. The Russian habit of making transnational deals through offshore firms, which minimizes taxation and maximizes confidentiality, is incomparably more competitive than traditional tax arrangements.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 08, 2008
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