The State Duma, has passed a bill on the taxation of digital assets that exempts their sale from value-added tax in the Russian Federation. Some other services of digital asset exchanges will also be exempted.
In addition, the bill established income tax rates of 13% for Russian exchanges on the first 5 million rubles of the taxable base annually, 15% on amounts above that limit and 15% across the board for foreign exchange operators. The current tax rate for companies is 20%.
Russia has tempered its skeptical stance on cryptocurrency as the country has increasingly felt the pressure of Western economic sanctions stemming from its invasion of Ukraine. Major Russian banks have been blocked from the SWIFT system and G7 countries this week banned the purchase of newly mined or refined Russian gold. Those moves, along with a host of other sanctions, led to Russia’s reported default on foreign debt servicing.
Russia’s Sber bank is preparing to launch a stablecoin, and Russian Central Bank first deputy chair Olga Skorobogatova stated in an interview dated on Thursday that trials of a digital ruble will be moved up from 2024 to April 2023. A pilot project involving 12 Russian banks is underway.
