There will be no more banking secrecy for tax authorities

In the next three years, Russian tax authorities may get more opportunities to study information about banks’ clients. Expansion of the rights of the Federal Tax Service is provided for in the “Main Directions of Budget and Tax Policy”, which the government submitted to the State Duma.

What kind of information about clients and according to what scheme the tax authorities will be able to receive is not said in the document? It simply provides for “expanding the possibilities for tax authorities to obtain information from credit institutions necessary for tax control, as well as sending such information at the request of the competent authority of a foreign state.”

The government also proposes to legislate the possibility of exchanging data between the Bank of Russia and the Federal Tax Service: then the regulator will have access to information representing tax secrets, and the tax service – to bank secrets. As follows from the document, this exchange may be necessary for the Central Bank “to perform the functions assigned to it.”

The FTS has been striving to gain unlimited access to banking secrets for a long time, since the early 2000s, experts say. At that time, Mikhail Mishustin, the current head of the Government, had already worked in the tax authorities and knows this topic very well. All these years, the Central Bank has been on the way of the FTS to banking secrecy, which believes that the opening of full access to the movement of citizens’ funds can reduce confidence in the banking system.