OREANDA-NEWS  At a meeting on Tuesday, the State Duma adopted in the second and third readings a law on increasing the income tax rate for natural monopoly entities transporting oil and petroleum products through the trunk pipeline system (that is, Transneft) to 40% in the tax periods 2025-2030.

Amendments to the Tax Code (No. 746277-8) were submitted to Parliament by the government last week.

Currently, the profit tax of Transneft is calculated at a generally established rate of 20%. From January 1, 2025, it should grow to 25%, as for all Russian organizations.

The adopted amendments state that in the tax periods 2025-2030 the tax rate is set at 40%. At the same time, the amount of tax calculated at the tax rate of 23% is credited to the federal budget, and the amount of tax calculated at the tax rate of 17% is credited to the budgets of the subjects of the Russian Federation.

Earlier, during a meeting of the State Duma Budget Committee, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Sazanov said that the rate increase was due to the company's monopoly position. "If this is a regulated type of activity, and this is, by and large, a monopoly on the market, accordingly, an increased corporate income tax rate is provided for this type of activity, due, by and large, to the monopoly position of the company, the only group of companies that transports oil and petroleum products," Sazanov said.

He noted that additional budget revenues from the increased rate could be in the range of 20-40 billion rubles per year.

Net profit of Transneft according to RAS for 9 months of 2024 amounted to 97 billion rubles against 190.6 billion rubles for the same period in 2023, profit before tax was at the level of 115.1 billion rubles. In 2023, according to IFRS, it was at the level of 296.5 billion rubles, according to RAS - 187.04 billion rubles, profit before tax was estimated at 236.24 billion rubles.

This initiative of the Ministry of Finance was a "shock" to market participants, said the Association of Investors "AVO", which represents the interests of private investors. The Russian Federation owns 100% of Transneft's ordinary shares, and preferred shares of the monopoly are traded on the market.