Experts will discuss doing business in Russia at the Gaidar Forum at RANEPA
The specifics of doing business in Russia will be a highlight of the Gaidar Forum, which will be held at the Presidential Academy from January 15 to 17, 2019.
On the first day of the forum, experts will discuss the improvement of the supervision and control system at the session Russian Jurisdiction: Attractiveness and Competitiveness Factors. The May 2018 Presidential Executive Order On National Goals and Strategic Objectives through to 2024 identifies the development of small and medium-sized businesses and support for individual entrepreneurial initiatives as one of the priority areas for national projects. Deputy Prime Minister Konstantin Chuichenko; Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Statehood Development and Legislation Pavel Krasheninnikov; Presidential business ombudsman Boris Titov; Director of the Government Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law Taliya Khabriyeva; and Director of RANEPA Institute of Public Administration and Civil Service (IPACS) Igor Bartsits will discuss the quality of legal regulation and enforcement in Russia, the prospects and ways to promote the Russian national jurisdiction’s competitiveness, and instruments of the legal framework development. The discussion will be moderated by Vladimir Gruzdev, Chairman of the Board of the Association of Lawyers of Russia.
On the next day, experts will discuss Taxation Policy as a Factor of Russian Business Competitiveness. The session will be attended by Head of the Federal Tax Service Mikhail Mishustin; Deputy Finance Minister Ilya Trunin; President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin; and Presidential business ombudsman Boris Titov. Over the past six years, the basic principle of tax policy has been to maintain the unchanged fiscal conditions (basic tax rates), as well as to improve the structure and administration of particular taxes, and to computerize tax administration as a whole.
Over the past ten years, Russia has risen from 134th to 53rd place in the World Bank Group’s Doing Business ranking by its ‘tax’ component. The Russian tax system largely meets the World Bank’s ‘ideal tax system’ criteria, but there exists a sustained set of myths that cause heated debates in the business community and during the drafting and discussion of budget laws.
The participants will discuss how close the Russian tax system is to the ideal tax system; how reasonably we can discuss the possibility of progressive taxation in Russia; how to assess the economic and fiscal consequences of the adopted tax maneuver in the oil and gas sector; and whether it is possible to increase the appeal of the Russian tax jurisdiction for wealthy citizens. Furthermore, the panelists will consider issues of Russia’s new tax for the self-employed and the transition to a tax system that would vertically balance government budgets of different levels. The moderator will be Rector of the Russian Foreign Trade Academy Sergei Sinelnikov-Murylev; the keynote report will be delivered by Director for Research of the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy Sergei Drobyshevsky.
On January 17, the Gaidar Forum experts will discuss taxation of small businesses in Russia. Over the recent period, the government has shown an increased attention to the problems of SME taxation, and this part of the tax system is changing dynamically. Yet, the small business sector has still not achieved high development results despite the growing number of tax preferences. Therefore, Russia needs to work out priorities for the taxation of small businesses at present and for the long term.
The participants of the session Taxation of Small Business in Russia: Development Scenarios, will talk about the need for reforming special tax regimes, their feasibility, opportunities for sectoral development of small business through tax preferences and increasing SMEs’ contribution to GDP. Nikolai Milogolov, Senior Researcher at the Tax Policy Center at the Finance Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance, will moderate the discussion. The session will be attended by Alexander Kosolapov, Head of Special Tax Regimes Subdivision of Tax and Customs Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance; Alexander Kalinin, President of OPORA RUSSIA nationwide organization of small and medium-sized businesses; Milena Arslanova, Director of the Investment Policy Department of the Ministry of Economic Development, and other experts.
10th Gaidar Forum Organizers:
The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA);
The Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy (Gaidar Institute);
The Association of Innovative Regions of Russia (AIRR).
The general partners of the Gaidar Forum are Gazprom and Gazprombank; strategic partners include Prosveshcheniye publishing house, Coca-Cola, Pharmstandard group, ACIG Group of Companies, the Russian Textbook Corporation, SANOFI, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Russian Railways, MSD, and Mastercard; EY, Cisco and Russian Direct Investment Fund are partners. This discussion’s partners are Philips, Cherkizovo and RVC.
The general information partners of the Gaidar Forum include the Rossiya 24 TV channel, Forbes global media company, RBC and TASS news agencies. The official information agency is Rossiya Segodnya. The general radio partner is Business FM. The strategic information partners are Kommersant Publishers, the RT TV channel, Interfax and Gazeta.RU. The main information partners are Profil weekly, FederalPress news agency, and Invest Foresight online magazine. The international information partners are Sputnik and Cision. Other media partners include PRIME news agency, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, RNS news agency, Radio Ekho Moskvy, News.Ru, Polit.ru, Parlamentskaya Gazeta, the PRO BUSINESS TV channel, Strategia magazine, AK&M, BRICS, Ekonomika i Zhizn weekly, National Banking Journal, Expert Tatarstan magazine, the Smart Country information platform, Financial One, Naans Media, and the Public Administration scientific political journal.
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