The "Cockroach's" Treasury Is Leaking

Because of the strikes, fewer and fewer taxes are being paid to the budget.

The Belarusian authorities have published data on tax receipts for 9 months. The officials have many reasons for concern, banki24.by writes.

The data on budget receipts, which are controlled by the tax authorities, have become known. For 9 months, the treasury collected 19 439 billion rubles through this channel. Compared to 2019, tax revenues fell even in nominal - by 0.7%.

At the same time, the GDP deflator, which corresponds to the rate of price growth in the economy's main sectors, was 111.3% in January - September. This means that in real terms, revenues through the tax authorities' channel decreased by 10.8%.

According to the data of the tax authorities, the republican budget suffered losses. The revenues of the republican budget fell by 8.7% to BYN 7.653 billion. Central treasury revenues adjusted for price increases in the economy sank 17.9%.

The main failure occurred in the Minsk region. From this region's payers, 426.5 million BYN were redistributed to the republican budget (against 934.1 million BYN in 2019). Apparently, the drop in revenues is due to the bad situation in Belaruskali and BELAZ.

The main sources of income in 2020 were VAT, income tax, and excise taxes. These sources provided 29.7%, 25.1%, and 11.1% of income through the tax authorities' channel. In 2019, instead of excise taxes, the top three included income tax.

Now its share in revenues has decreased from 11.9% to 7.8%. If last year 2,333 billion Belarusian rubles were collected at the expense of this tax, it was 1,514 billion rubles this year. The decline in revenues is due to the collapse of profits in the economy due to the ruble's devaluation.

Also, in 2020, income in the form of dividends on shares and income from other forms of participation in capital decreased several times. The fall by 2019 was 2.2 times - up to 643 million BYN. The reason for the collapse is the same as for income tax - a reduction in taxable profits of flagship enterprises.

In terms of types of activity, the largest payments the budget were made by beverage producers (BYN 1,048 billion), tobacco producers (BYN 1.155 billion), oil refining (BYN 797.7 million), energy (BYN 1.024 billion), construction (BYN 1.379 billion), wholesale trade (2.632 billion BYN), retail trade (1.504 billion BYN), land and pipeline transport (1.487 billion BYN), information and communications (1.128 billion BYN).

Revenues from beverage producers, tobacco producers, and oil refineries are related to excise taxes, from trade - VAT. Interestingly, there are only 3 paying enterprises in the tobacco system.

As for payments from residents of the Park of High Technologies, they still occupy a marginal place in the overall boiler - only 1.5% of receipts controlled by the tax authorities (294.2 million BYN for 9 months).

The negative revenues from free economic zones are noteworthy. Payers in the FEZ took 57.6 million BYN from the budget. This means that the amount of VAT or income tax refunds exceeded the amount of taxes paid.

By the way, a similar situation has been observed for several years in a row in woodworking, on the modernization of which the authorities spent 4 billion US dollars. For 9 months, receipts amounted to minus 122.5 million BYN (in 2019, it was minus 75.7 million BYN).