It is not a secret for any accountant in our country that the legislation in the field of taxation changes with us almost as often as the weather. The long-suffering Tax Code of the Russian Federation has undergone more than 300 amendments since its adoption. And, it seems, lawmakers are not going to stop there, adopting more and more amendments and laws designed to improve taxation.
And accountants have no choice but to study these amendments annually and formulate a strategy for accounting and reporting the firm.
Well, everyone has his own job. 2015 was no exception to this trend. A lot of amendments and innovations were adopted, a lot of taxes were affected, even new fees were introduced. Of course, the government could not ignore VAT. The reason is that the fees from this tax make up 27 percent of the country's total budget. And violations, especially affecting VAT refunds, are not getting smaller. Let us consider in detail what 2015 brought us in terms of collection, reporting and reimbursement of value added tax.
Declaration Innovation
So, the changes affected both the form of reporting, and the procedure for returning the amount of VAT. Here are the key changes that 2015 brought.
- The most important transformations have occurred with the VAT declaration. It should now be filed exclusively in electronic form. The declaration presented on paper is considered not submitted, which means that penalties, suspension of movement on settlement accounts and other troubles can follow. Those who have long since switched to reporting on telecommunication channels will not notice this part of the innovations, but for the rest it remains to be recommended to join their friendly ranks as soon as possible. After all, electronic reporting is a requirement not only of tax authorities, funds have also been insisting on it for a long time. In addition, this form of reporting is indeed more convenient and faster.
- The second innovation that affected the declaration was a change in its contents. Now it fully includes the information contained in the purchase book and sales book. This data will form sections 8 and 9 of the VAT return, and it will be technically impossible to send a document to the operator without them.
Changes in the adoption of documents
Since 2015, when submitting a declaration, organizations have the right to declare a deduction in the period when the goods are received, and not after the invoice has been received. This is also true if the goods were returned from the buyer. VAT declaration is filled upon receipt of this product back. This innovation is rather positive. The accountant will no longer have to endlessly ring counterparties to include the deduction in the desired tax period, the fact of the return will be enough.
In addition, the taxpayer has the right to declare such a deduction within three years from the moment when the goods were taken into account.
Innovations regarding other documents
Another innovation concerned the invoice journal. It should now be maintained only by those organizations that issue transit invoices.
Such organizations are developers who build facilities for investors, intermediaries acting on their own behalf, and freight forwarders who receive remuneration only for arranging transportation. Moreover, these categories of taxpayers are required to keep a journal, regardless of their tax status for VAT. That is, even if they are not VAT payers or are exempt from payment.The remaining categories of businessmen keep only books of purchases and sales. Returning the goods to the supplier who paid the VAT, in this case entails the right to deduction.
Compensation Innovations
Significant changes have occurred in the area affecting the return of goods. The VAT return refund declaration has changed. Now, a desk check on the fact at any minute threatens to turn into an exit. If earlier inspectors had the right only to demand the necessary documents, now they can, as part of a desk audit, inspect the territory and premises of the taxpayer, documents and objects located in these places.
In addition, not only organizations that wish to receive a VAT refund upon export may be subject to such searches. The grounds may now be the contradictions in the filed ordinary declaration, even if it does not declare the amount for compensation. If the inspector suspects that the amounts reflected in the declaration are incorrect, he has the full right to rush to visit you “within a three-month period”.
Other VAT innovations
From January 1, 2015, when selling the property and property rights of a debtor that is declared insolvent in accordance with the law, that is, bankrupt, it is not necessary to charge VAT. Now such property is not subject to taxation.
It is no longer necessary to restore the VAT previously accepted for deduction of goods or property, including fixed assets, if they began to be used in operations taxed at a zero rate.
Russian air carriers were allowed to apply a zero VAT rate when providing services for the transit transportation of goods by aircraft with technical landing on the territory of the Russian Federation.
VAT refund of goods for those costs that are normalized in the accounting for income tax is now made in full, without the same standardization. The only exceptions were hospitality and travel expenses. A very positive change for taxpayers.
Expert council
Many accountants have situations when the invoice and invoice for December 2014 came, for example, only in February 2015, or even in April. The buyer reflected the goods in 2014, if the supplier reflected them in 2015, would it be a mistake? The answer is no. You can reflect the VAT refund in the period when it is convenient for you, for three years after the fact of sale. Electronic compilation of shopping books and sales books of buyers and suppliers does not contradict this. Firstly, as the tax authorities assure, the year 2014 will not be checked according to invoices, and secondly, the control system has the ability to take into account such situations, and not the quarterly periods, but the cumulative amounts of invoices will be checked automatically. They will be analyzed in aggregate for all periods. So you can safely declare a deduction in the period when you consider it appropriate, even if your counterparty did otherwise.
VAT bills
According to the legislation, taxpayers have the right to refund VAT in the form of transferring funds from the state budget to the organization’s bank account in the reporting quarter, in which a situation arose when the amounts to be refunded of VAT exceeded the amount to be paid.
More often this happens with export organizations. And next year they will have a pleasant surprise from lawmakers. A new project is being prepared for adoption, according to which now they do not need to wait for the goods to be sold, and supporting documents are collected. It will be enough to file a regular quarterly declaration and expect a VAT refund. This idea was part of the anti-crisis measures that the government is preparing to support the economy as a whole and enterprises exporting goods outside the Russian Federation in particular.
What will the new amendments bring?
Such timely reimbursement of export VAT will allow companies to no longer withdraw from the turnover the impressive amounts spent on paying tax. In fact, the situation is created that enterprises, in fact, credit the state budget free of charge for many billions, and because of delays in collecting customs documents, they cannot timely receive a deduction and direct money into circulation.
Many managers of export organizations claim that most of the time is spent on confirmation of export by the customs authorities. If such a measure is adopted, it will undoubtedly significantly improve the economy. The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation believes that this procedure does not pose significant risks for the budget, it will only make the mechanism of receipt - the return of the VAT advance more equal.
Now there is a situation with uniform receipts and emergency deductions, when the organization first accumulates documents, and then submits a return for a sufficiently long period of time. Such jerks are not good for the budget.
Tip
In order to ensure that an entrepreneur can be sure of a VAT return for 2015, a special service has been created on the IFTS website to verify the control values of purchase books and sales books of counterparties. You do not need to ask all the other parties to provide the data they provide regarding your transactions. It is enough to go to the IFTS website, go to the service page, indicate the TIN of the counterparty and the date of the transaction, and you will see if any data is entered by this date. If there was a return from the buyer of VAT, this is especially true. Such a mechanism greatly simplifies the work of an accountant, which, in connection with the innovations in legislation adopted in 2015, has suffered a lot of additional work.
General analysis of innovations
In conclusion, a small analysis of the changes made by lawmakers regarding the payment and VAT refund in 2015. It should be understood that innovations are called, first of all, to compensate for the crisis, the presence of which is naive to deny. The economic downturn that followed all the well-known political events is present, and the task of the state was to create a buffer for it. I would like to note that despite some tightening of measures to carry out the VAT refund procedure and more complete disclosure of financial statements, the state has refrained from the increase in tax rates predicted by some experts. This can not but rejoice. Yes, and the tightening of procedures is more likely aimed at their transparency and leads more to a general economic recovery than to attempts to completely suppress the initiative of business. And the return to the supplier of VAT is completely simplified.
It is no secret that in the field of VAT accounting by taxpayers for many years there have been malicious violations, such as, for example, illegal reimbursement, fraud with export and other things. For law-abiding taxpayers, new measures will not create great difficulties, but they will seriously complicate the life of fraudsters.
