Russian Ministry of Finance comes back to idea to take “devaluation” income from oil companies

The Russian Ministry of Finance may once again come up with a proposal to obtain additional income for the budget from oil companies through a change in the formula for calculating mineral extraction tax. In autumn 2015, the idea was abandoned, but now, when the oil prices are at 12-year lows and the budget needs to find 1.5 trillion rubles, the debate on MET was resumed, a source in the financial and economic block of the Government, an interlocutor in the Ministry of Energy and a source of one of the oil companies told the RBC. The press centre of the Ministry of Finance hasn’t responded to the request of the RBC, as a representative of the Ministry of Energy declined to comment.

Now the base rate of the tax is calculated according to the formula, which has the price of oil for the current tax period, reduced by $15 at current exchange rates. The Finance Ministry proposed to fix this deduction in rubles at the rate of 43.8 rubles in 2016 (47.1 rubles in 2017 and 49.8 rubles in 2018). This would give the budget more than 600 billion rubles in 2016, the Ministry of Finance calculated in September. As the Finance Minister Anton Siluanov explained in an interview with the RBC, the ruble revenues of the oil companies decreased not much - the fall in the oil prices was offset by the fall of the ruble, and the costs weren’t supposed to grow strongly. "And the deduction, calculated in rubles at the new rate, jumped more than twice. At the price of $50 the deduction of $15 at the current rate leads to the fact that the relative level of the taxation in this sector greatly decreases,"- said the Minister.