The Federal tax service (FTS) has drafted a bill enabling taxpayers to voluntarily pay taxes owed by third parties. It is expected that this bill will not only simplify the procedure of paying taxes and consequently prevent penalty accrual, but will also accelerate arrivals of monetary resources into the state budget.

Currently, the tax payment duty can only be performed personally by the taxpayer (Art. 45 of the Tax code of the Russian Federation). FTS suggests changing this article by allowing taxpayers to voluntarily pay taxes of third parties. 

A practical advantage of this novelty is based on the observation that quite often companies do not have sufficient funds on their accounts to pay their tax liabilities, while their management or shareholders can potentially repay the debts. The bill will allow performing such obligations by third persons at their earliest convenience without the necessity to formally transfer their money to the indebted companies.

The first court case revolving around the new rule of the Russian Civil Code establishing that if a share in a limited liability company is pledged, the shareholder rights are exercised by the pledge holder (Art. 358.15 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation), has been be recorded. However, in that case the pledge holder used these shareholder’s rights for dilution of shares in the chаrter capital, having decreased the shareholder’s shares in the chаrter capital from 100% to less than 10% without a court decision (by using corporate rights). Such practice can potentially reduce the attractiveness of shares in LLC for pledge.

According to Art. 358.15 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which came into force on July 1, 2014, if an LLC share is pledged, the shareholder’s rights are carried out by the pledge holder. This rule is supposed to strengthen the pledge holder’s position and increase the attractiveness of shares in LLC as pledge objects. However, application of this rule has already led to abuse by the pledge holder who exercised these rights for dilution of the shareholder’s share in the chаrter capital. There are concerns that the extent of such abuse can increase. In that case the courts will have to determine where the thin line between good faith usage of the pledge holders’ new rights and their misapplication lies.

In June the Ministry of Economic Development called for businessmen to calculate their losses and expenses incurred as a result of legislative novelties. Based on the analysis of these new laws, the Russian companies estimated their expenses at 2.6 trillion RUB.

According to the Ministry of Economic Development, the energy sector will particularly take the fall due to the expanded list of legal requirements for environmental control. Taking into account the received data, in 2017 the Ministry of Economic Development will further analyze the consequences of laws, governmental and ministerial acts on businesses in order to improve the quality of the state regulation of economic activities.

Public consultations regarding the Draft Model of opposition procedure initiated by the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) in June, were concluded at the end of July. The agency’s proposal is aimed at the reduction of the review duration of applications for registration of trademarks.

This draft establishes that trademarks submitted for registration will be examined only in terms of unconditional formal grounds for denial in registration without contesting identical and confusingly similar designations. If no unconditional grounds for denial in registration could be found, a three-month period is established for all interested parties to file objections (oppositions) against registration of the trademark on any other legal grounds.

In case of a dispute the settlement period will take 6 months, whereupon the opposition either should be withdrawn, or Rospatent will have to solve the dispute. In spite of the fact that this procedure can lead to an increase in Rospatent’s and the Intellectual Property Rights Court’s workload due to handling of opposition cases, foreign practice with regard to the opposition procedure demonstrates positive effects of this novelty.

On August 1, 2016, the Federal Tax Service (FTS) completed the formation of the Unified register of small and medium-sized businesses and made it freely available on its website. Businessmen are now invited to check out the information about their companies, to review it, and to add additional information if desired, such as information about their products, experience, or participation in partnership programs.

The register is formed automatically on the basis of income data and average number of employees of companies according to EGRYUL, EGRIP and other sources. Information from the register can be received in an electronic form free of charge.

Thus, economic entities will be able to confirm their status as small or medium-sized businesses by obtaining an extract from this register. This opportunity will save time with regard to state procurement and state support.