Website Pravo.ru researched the trend in fewer court claims involving the Federal Tax Services (FTS) from 1 January 2014 until 30 June 2017 being heard; in 2014 the tax authority submitted more than 70,000 claims whereas in 2016 there were less than 20,000.

Elena Kilinkarova, PhD, Counsel and Head of the Tax Practice at Maxima Legal considers that “the overall trend of a lower number of disputes involving the FTS as the defendant might be explained by the introduction on 1 January 2014 of mandatory pre-trial proceedings”.

According to Elena, “it is noteworthy that whilst there has been a reduction in the number of claims between 2014-2016 challenged by taxpayers, between 2014-2016 the value of claims remained at the same level, which leads to the conclusion that the average value of disputes involving taxpayers has increased.

At the same time, it follows from the published data, that the outcomes of disputes from claims made by taxpayers in recent year have not changed in their favour.  In spite of the fact that the number of cases won and lost by taxpayers remains roughly the same, we can conclude that in larger disputes the courts favour the positions of the FTS – whilst the number of cases for which taxpayers claims were not approved is unchanged, the value of claims for disputes in 2015 and 2016 was significantly higher than the figures for 2014”.

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On 13 October, SPIBA published the results of its elections for the co-chairmanship of the Legal Committee, in which Senior Associate at Maxima Legal and Specialist in IP/IT practices, Maxim Ali took part.  Maxim received 55% of the votes and in the near future will take up his role as co-chairman.

The purpose of the Legal Committee of SPIBA is to improve the legal basis and to create favourable conditions for businesses in the North-Western Federal region of Russia.  The list of activities of the Committee includes: developing legislative initiatives, interacting with regional and federal departments to promote the proposals of SPIBA’s members, interacting with other business associations to strengthen the value of the views of the international business community in St Petersburg.

Our congratulations to Maxim and to the other newly elected co-chairmen.

On 6 October, Vladimir Kilinkarov, Partner and Head of the PPP Practice at Maxima Legal, acted as moderator for a session titled ‘Projects in transport and infrastructure and PPP opportunities in their implementation’ at the 10th International Forum ‘Transport Potential’.

In his presentation, Vladimir talked about the mechanism of PPP as a driver for the development of the economy in the North-West region of Russia, listed the economic pre-conditions, problems and perspectives for their resolution and analysed the road map for the ‘infrastructure mortgage’.

In the working session, which was moderated by Vladimir, Rivzan Gazimadov, Advisor to the Ministry of Affairs in the North Caucaus, Olga Potiforova, Head of the department for PPP and External Relations Directorate for the Development of the Transport System in St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, Tair Suleimanov, Senior Associate at Dentons, Sergei Ponomarev, Group T-1, Renat Valiulin, permanent representative of the Republic of Tatarstan in St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, took part.

The international forum is a unique public independent G2B and B2B platform where matters on the functioning of the transport system in Russia are raised in the context of developing opportunities.  The event provides an opportunity to discuss with representatives from federal ministries and departments the trends and problems in the transport-logistics sector and the movement of goods as well as to get an idea of the opportunities in new markets and increasing exports.

In 2017, more than 400 delegates from 50 regions of Russia and 10 other countries, took part in the forum.

To review the programme and news from the event, please click on the following link.

On 12 October, Maxim Ali, Senior Associate and specialist in IP/IT at Maxima Legal, took part in a discussion organised by SPIBA on the topic of ‘The use intellectual property in marketing’.

At the event, participants discussed issues around using intellectual property in advertisements, reviewing challenging Russian and overseas court cases and formed practical advice on how, from a legal point of view, to conduct marketing activities correctly.

Maxim Ali discussed problems with the lawful use of user content from social networks and explained which kinds of practical problems companies might encounter should they wish to use social media marketing to promote their business.  When summing up his presentation, Maxim gave a variety of recommendations which would enable companies to avoid breaching the rights of social media users.  Maxim also answered questions from the audience in connection with real-life interactions between companies and social network users.

On 5 October, Elena Kilinkarova, PhD, Counsel and Head of the Tax department at Maxima Legal gave a presentation at the SPIBA seminar ‘Tax consequences for cross-border transactions: recent changes’.

As part of her presentation, titled ‘OECD BEPS Multilateral Instrument – what is it and how it will affect taxation on business in Russia’, Elena discussed in detail the principal tasks and recommendations in the BEPS Multilateral Instrument, multilateral convention, the importance of this tool for Russia and the potential consequences in practice followings its implementation.

In addition to Elena Kilinkarova’s presentation, Alexander Simonov, Senior Manager for Tax matters at Mazars gave a presentation ‘VAT on cross-border transactions: review of trends in court practice’ and Anton Kabakov, Partner at Forte Tax & Law, gave a presentation ‘Tax benefit in the Tax Code. Fixing or changing approaches’.