Sales tax may be canceled in 2004

The Russian Finance and Economy Ministries stand for abolishing the sales tax effective 2004, Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin declared at the fourth conference of the association of Russian auditing agencies. "We will propose not to prolong this tax through 2004", he said. Earlier the Finance Ministry supported the idea of prolonging this tax through 2004.

At the same time Kudrin mentioned that on December 5 the Russian government would consider a plan of the tax reform for the next three years. According to him, the corresponding proposals have been already prepared and submitted to the government.