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Authorities' moves make taxpayers use "shadow" schemes - paper

MOSCOW, August 31 (RIA Novosti) - Although the Russian Interior Ministry is streamlining tax audit rules to make the work of its tax revenue departments understandable for business and to reduce the number of unjustified checkups, experts do not expect any significant positive results from these efforts, a popular daily reported Wednesday.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta cited Sergei Belyakov, the deputy chairman of the tax committee with the business-friendly Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, as saying that the national tax system reflected the government's tax policy. Capital flight has recently intensified, whereas investment inflow has fallen, despite the president's correct statements about what tax policy should be, Belyakov said. These factors suggest that the authorities' words are not backed up by their actions, the expert said.

The measures proposed by the Finance Ministry to improve tax administration are also failing to find support among the expert community. Vadim Zaitsev, the head of analysis at law firm Pepelyayev, Goltsblat & Partners, says the government was right to decide on reducing the tax burden and increasing taxpayers' responsibility. But low tax rates alone are not enough. Moreover, an "administrative tax" in the form of tax reports and tax inquiry servicing has risen while the government is implementing its tax policy with excesses.

Experts say the government's latest moves like its proceedings against embattled oil company Yukos and its decision within the Yukos case to abolish the statute of limitations for unscrupulous taxpayers are clearly adversely affecting business and the economy as a whole. "The very idea of returning to the notions of bona fide taxpayers and tax evaders is erroneous," Belyakov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "It opens the door wide open for abuses by tax oversight agencies."

Undermined confidence in authorities will break the back of economic growth and only lead to unofficial or "shadow" schemes, Yevgeny Yasin, the academic supervisor at the Moscow's Higher School of Economics, said.