In March, investigators suspected two big bloggers of tax evasion. Earlier this month, charges were brought against Valeria Chekalina (ler_chek), and on March 21, against Alexandra Mitroshina. Both organized paid trainings and raffles, the income of which was distributed among various individual entrepreneurs operating under a simplified tax system. Vadim Bagaturia, member of the bar of Freitak and Sons, told RTVI why tax authorities have started hunting bloggers and who else should be worried.
Has the taxman really decided to go after bloggers?
We have a fairly typical story in front of us, because these bloggers are no different from individual entrepreneurs or ordinary businessmen who earn in a different way. The fact that they are media people does not mean that they are inviolable.
You remember how, in the late 90s, the campaign of the tax police “Pay taxes and sleep well” was carried out. Then even a press conference took place, to which Kirkorov, Pugacheva and other stars of that time were invited. It raised the issue that some people own planes, limos, collect thousands of gigs, and pay as much tax as if we were a retiree.
It’s the exact same story here. Our tax code really allows you to work as an individual entrepreneur with a certain amount of income and pay taxes according to a simplified system – either 6% or 15% less expenses. When you cross this threshold, which is about 120 million rubles, you need to open a legal entity.
The bloggers in question simply decided not to bother, not to hire a qualified accountant and lawyer, and eventually got caught. They used a fairly common scheme – they split their income between different individual entrepreneurs, while selling the same service.
How Bloggers Caught the Tax’s Attention
Alexander Kazakov / Kommersant
Now the Federal Tax Service can see a lot of things in real time, including the gigantic earnings of these bloggers. At the same time, I cannot say that the period of some kind of campaign on the part of the state vis-à-vis bloggers has come. It’s just that the taxman finally got around to it.
Of course, the incomes of big bloggers have been high for a long time. But if we look at Article 101 of the tax code, we see that it refers to the non-payment of taxes for a period of three years. That is to say, in three years they accumulated a particularly large debt to the tax authorities and their scheme collapsed. Criminal proceedings have begun against them.
Moreover, the young members of our law enforcement can also be cited as the reason for the attention given to bloggers. And if the old dinosaurs, who started their work in the 90s, don’t understand “those Internets of yours”, then the youth is very active. Now the opera, investigators, or tax officials can be the same 20-year-olds who know the blogosphere well.
They watch what prizes bloggers offer, what prizes they charge for their marathons, and how many people gather at these events. Why not add a plus one and get verification results that confirm bloggers haven’t paid taxes?
Here you can draw a parallel with cryptocurrencies. Barely ten years ago, only a few hackers knew about them, and five years ago they started shouting it with all their irons. Nevertheless, criminal cases in which cryptocurrencies appear as a financial asset or some kind of value began to appear not so long ago. Our law enforcement system is still quite archaic, so we’ve never seen such high-profile cases against bloggers before.
What should other bloggers who have used similar tax avoidance schemes do?
As a lawyer, I can give them a recommendation: quickly, at the speed of sound, run to the tax office and recalculate everything correctly. Let them hire good accountants and lawyers and pay off their debts, which some of them must have accumulated. And then it will be impossible to initiate criminal proceedings against them on this issue.
Another question is that the situation is actually a dead end. Because in addition to the article on tax evasion, there is also an article on the legalization of criminally acquired income. If the money saved from paying taxes was spent on the purchase of absolutely any item – real estate, car, currency, cryptocurrency, jewelry – then these actions will be considered legalization of earned income from criminal way.
And if the amount of money spent in this way exceeds six million rubles, then this is a serious crime, for which imprisonment is provided. And for a serious crime, you can be prosecuted within 10 years from the date of its commission.
That is, on the one hand, you can pay taxes, but at the same time, the attraction under the article on the legalization of criminally acquired income cannot be excluded.
Of course, we have to look at the evolution of law enforcement practices. If I was the investigative committee, I would not initiate such cases if the person paid off the debt. If such cases are brought, we must then hope for the good sense of the courts, which will stop them for lack of corpus delicti. And if the courts do not understand this, then in two or three years a decision will most likely be made by the Constitutional Court. Because it is he who is the very last judicial body in our country to be able to evaluate a certain application rule which is causing controversy.
How dangerous is it to split income
I’m going to let you in on a secret: for seven years, the tax authorities have been following these schemes very closely. Judicial practice has developed, administrative practice is being developed, when the tax office conducts on-the-spot checks and levies additional taxes. Based on the fact that such things have been traced repeatedly, this no longer raises additional questions.
The distribution of income between individual entrepreneurs and controlled legal entities is very clearly visible. Economic crime agents, as well as tax inspectorates, open such schemes in a “one-two” fashion.
By the way, when it comes to crime, another principle arises. The activity of the commission of inquiry in this case is aimed at the unconditional replenishment of the budget. The task of the investigators, when initiating a case, is to apply the repressive mechanism provided for by the criminal procedure legislation in order to stimulate the reconstitution of the fiscal deficit.
That is to say, the investigator will drag the suspect, his social circle, his subcontractors, his partners for questioning, and carry out searches. Perhaps other procedural coercion measures will be applied. All of this, of course, creates stress. And this stress should help the businessman to pay his taxes.
As soon as he does so, all state claims against him are immediately removed. But the offender has such a happy occasion only once, when he did not pay taxes for the first time. If such a crime is committed again, the person will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
Should middle-income bloggers be worried?
Adobe Stock
In fact, everyone who pays taxes should be worried. The accuracy of the completion of your declarations should be checked annually or quarterly, depending on when you complete them.
In our article on tax evasion, there is a fork of the magnitude of this non-payment. Thus, it can be large or extra large. For example, for entrepreneurs, for businesses, non-payment of taxes in the amount of 13.5 million rubles is considered especially significant. If we consider individual entrepreneurs and individuals, this threshold is about six million rubles.
Do these initiatives speak of problems with the country’s budget?
There is nothing unusual in the state’s desire to replenish the Treasury. It was, is and will be. Budget expenditures in all states are constantly increasing due to the existence of a tendency to increase the salaries of civil servants, spending on state-funded programs. Naturally, efforts to restore order in this area will always be made.
There is such a thesis “people are the new oil in Russia”. Now the income of individual entrepreneurs and individuals exceeds a third of the country’s budget. And for this money, frankly, the state will screw them up and continue to tighten the screw – of course, this is to be expected.
The laws of economics work here. These are not at all directly global problems in the country, because of which the authorities decided to “scratch the bottom of the barrel”. It’s just a really blatant case where people, according to the media, earned about half a billion rubles a year and paid taxes as if they earned 100 million.
Moreover, it must be understood that the proletarian hatred of businessmen literally runs in the blood of civil servants. Although we have had a market economy for 32 years, law enforcement officials still dismissively call businessmen “commercial”.
Therefore, those bloggers who earn several hundred million rubles only arouse the envy of law enforcement agencies. They don’t work hard, they get high, they risk their lives, they buy everything they can and everything they can’t. They are very rich people.
Moreover, a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions (mainly the use of the Internet) by suspicious bloggers, which effectively puts an end to their activity, will also be slowed down. After all, she is very insidious.
It is impossible to arrest a person under Article 198 on tax evasion. And according to the 170th, it is also impossible to arrest for the legalization of criminally acquired income. And it looks like the guys didn’t do anything about the house arrest. But if they are suddenly imprisoned, the time spent under house arrest will count towards their sentence. And the time spent under the prohibition of certain actions will not work. Therefore, I regard this measure of restraint as literally Jesuit.
Why all of this after all? Perhaps this is a kind of “red terror” aimed at prevention. Now other bloggers will watch it, go crazy and run to pay taxes. Well, blogger Valeria Chekalina and her husband were unlucky – they became the first of this cohort of cases. Of course, there will be others, I expect.
