Large businesses to save $1bn

The elimination of the tax police might bring a short-term but pretty noticeable economic effect, the Kommersant newspaper reported. Businesses can save considerable sums on court expenses. This is some $1bn per year. The tax police have been the agency, which has filed suits against taxpayers who tried to optimize their tax payments to budgets. As a rule, some 150-200 suits were filed against every large Russian company per year. The tax police have lost the majority of them. So the state budget has not received a lot from the tax police. As far as the companies are concerned, the average price of every court dispute was about $300,000. In other words, a large company had to spend about $50m per year. There are about 20 large companies in Russia that could spend such large sums of money. So, this "great twenty" will be saving at least $1bn per year, until the Interior Ministry's main department for fighting economic crimes becomes responsible for taxes. This department seldom loses lawsuits.