OREANDA-NEWS. The Federal Tax Service (FTS) has added to the major tobacco producers 60 billion rubles in taxes, the Russian newspaper writes on Thursday, citing sources. “The claims that the tax authorities have started to make against tobacco companies are growing”, the publication says. “Following the results of the on-site inspections to Russian divisions of Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco, Philip Morris International (PMI), and Don Co Japan Tobacco International, JTI) accrued 60 billion rubles".

According to the newspaper, tax claims to the Russian “daughter” of British American Tobacco are almost 40 billion rubles, and Imperial Tobacco can pay up to £ 204 million or 16.4 billion rubles. In addition, several billion rubles of taxes are additionally accrued to Don Tobacco, according to the results of inspections for the years 2014-2016. The amount of the accrual of Philip Morris International is still being clarified, said one of the interlocutors of Vedomosti.

The sources of the publication added that not all decisions of the Federal Tax Service have come into force yet, and companies may try to challenge them. The representative of the tax service did not respond to the request of Russian news. The FTS began actively testing tobacco companies after it drew attention to the sharply increased cigarette production in the fourth quarter, which manufacturers tried to ship to affiliate distributors in the same period. Artificially increasing sales, companies fixed excise rates before raising them from the new year and thereby reducing the tax burden, a federal official explained to the newspaper.

To stop this practice, amendments to the Tax Code were adopted. From 2017, if tobacco companies in the fourth quarter work too hard for the warehouse and their production exceeds the monthly average figures of the previous year, then they will have to pay excise tax 30% higher than usual when selling.