Category: Uncategorised

It seems that chief of ministry of communication (mincom) works independently of his office. As reported RBC, mincom believes current Russian tax legislation is sufficient for taxation of foreign internet companies and in order to implement any new taxation mechanism first of all a definition of internet company must be given. There is even mincom’s review concernign to this issue. It was made 1st of March 2015 by order of Russian president’s assistant Igor Shchyogolev, who is author of idea to receive more taxes from these companies.

As reported RIA Novosti, Russian ministry of communication (Mincom) considers opportunity to impose more taxes on foreign companies providing their clients residing in Russia with its services. The chief of Mincom believes foreign internet companies should pay taxes at the place where the end customer resides. And it is not about Google and Apple. It should concern all foreign companies.

The current EU rules allow these institutions to carry out preservation, indexing and similar copying operations (through a “preservation exception”), to allow for consultation of materials on their premises for research or private study (based on a “consultation exception”), and, in the case of public libraries, to make physical loans (allowed by a “public lending exception”).

EU directives provide for a list of exceptions to rights and are at a limited level of harmonisation. In most cases, Member States are free to reflect them or not in their national legislation. This, combined with the broad formulation of many of the exceptions has resulted in rather heterogeneous implementation. An exception present in the law of a given country may not exist in a neighbouring country or be subject to very different conditions.

If you don’t want to read whole report just take a look.

Legislation in force before the decision

According to Article 17 of the consolidated version of the Law on Intellectual Property (Texto Refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual; ‘TRLPI’) ‘[t]he author has exclusive rights of exploitation of his works regardless of their form and, in particular, reproduction rights …which cannot be exercised without his permission except in circumstances laid down in this Law’, and by the following articles which extend that reproduction right to other holders of intellectual property rights. Article 18 of the TRLPI specifies that reproduction means: ‘the fixation of the work on a medium which enables communication of the work and copying of the whole or part of the work’. In accordance with Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29, Article 31(1)(2) of the TRLPI provides that works which have already been circulated may be reproduced without the author’s permission for ‘private use by the copier without prejudice to Articles 25 and 99(a) of this Law, provided that usage of the copy is not collective or for profit’.

ASCAP became the first PRO in the world to announce record-breaking revenues of more than $1 billion for calendar year 2014. ASCAP also delivered historic high royalty distributions of over $883 million to its songwriter, composer and music publisher members, up $32.3 million, a nearly 4% increase from 2013. In addition to historical revenues and record breaking distributions to its members, the number of musical performances captured, identified, matched and processed for payment by ASCAP doubled from 250 billion in 2013 to 500 billion in 2014.

According to Vedomosti, such idea has been discussed at the meeting in administration of Russian president. But not only Google was under fire. Other foreign internet companies have been also considered as a target for new taxes. If EU wants more tax revenues from IT companies, why Russia should forget about similar opportunity? At the meeting participants have come to common opinion that Google and Apple certainly don’t pay enough taxes to Russian budget. When Russians buy apps, music or movies in such online store like AppStore, iTunes or GooglePlay, their payments are not imposed in Russia because they buy directly from foreign companies. Google pays taxes much less than Russian Yandex, for example.