During SPIEF-2024, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, Sergei Ryabukhin, in the framework of a discussion around illegal products, said that the upper house of parliament was going to propose crediting part of the excise taxes on tobacco to the income of the subjects of the Federation for a more effective fight against counterfeiting.
"For tobacco, we have a forecast that this year we will collect 800 billion rubles. excise taxes. Three years ago it was 16%, last year it was 12% counterfeit in this area. Even if it is 10% this year, we will lose almost 100 billion rubles. Therefore, we propose in the Federation Council to transfer part of the excise taxes to the income of the Russian regions <...>, now they are indifferent, not interested, so counterfeiting is going on, it's hard to fight it from the federal center if the regional authorities are not interested in it in any way," Ryabukhin explained.
According to him, the fight against counterfeiting in many areas is yielding results, but the volume of illegal products still remains significant.
"If we take strong alcohol, then in the period from 2017 to 2022, the consolidated budget lost 578 billion rubles. Almost 30 legislative amendments at various levels have brought about 425 billion rubles out of the shadow zone. Thus, for one category in five years, the scale of the disaster is billions of rubles," Ryabukhin stressed.
At the same time, according to the deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee, there is success in the field of harmonization of excisable goods rates in the countries of the Eurasian Union. Thus, by the end of 2024, the Eurasian Commission will adopt a final program for the harmonization of rates. "I repeat, this is important, because if we see that excise taxes in Belarus, Kazakhstan and other countries of the Eurasian Union are lower, then it is clear that crime will focus on this," Ryabukhin concluded.
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