President Vladimir Putin said the Russian authorities should take more active measures to digitize the economy and high-tech industries in order to “expand the horizons of development” and “create a new structure for our economy.”
So he responded to the speech of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, who oversees the development of the digital economy, the Internet and information technologies in the government. At the meeting, Chernyshenko pointed out the need for a new approach to the digitalization of the economy with the provision of tax incentives to companies operating in this area, as well as reducing the administrative burden and introducing artificial
intelligence. In 2020, the Russian government has developed a plan to support high-tech companies. They will receive tax preferences: insurance premiums for them will be reduced from 14 to 7.6%, and income tax – from 20 to 3%. Also, for IT companies, VAT will be abolished on advertising of developments and software on foreign digital platforms, and software developers will be able to receive special subsidies.
The purpose of such measures is to stimulate the export of Russian software and return Russian companies from other jurisdictions back to the country. Also, the authorities are preparing to adopt the regulation of cryptocurrencies: the State Duma is considering the laws “On digital financial assets” and “On digital currency”.
Vitaly Kirpichev, Development Director for Russia at TradingView, added that since 2017 there has been talk of legalizing mining at the legislative level. Two years ago, the issue of creating and maintaining mining pools was raised in order to keep the cryptocurrency inside the country. The Russian industrial mining operator BitCluster was created.
However, for cryptocurrencies and mining, the situation continues to be rather unfavorable, says Andrey Berezin, managing partner of the investment company Raison Asset Management. According to him, the new type of assets may interest the state in terms of taxes, but so far the volume of transactions is too small for this. Now the authorities see more threats in cryptocurrencies than benefits for the economy, so legalization is hardly possible in the near future.