Tax reforms in the oil industry do not save it from the growing fiscal burden

Sergey Kondratiev, Principal Director on Economic Studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Rossiyskaya Gazeta on the oil industry taxation.

Sergey Kondratiev believes that Russia will gradually move to a system where the basis for taxation will not be revenue, as in the case of mineral extraction tax (de facto), but income received (as is already happening with the tax on additional income from the hydrocarbons extraction). This is logical and is due to the fact that the costs of developing new fields are growing, and oil prices, being high, are unlikely to increase significantly in the coming years.

According to Kondratiev, with the rapid growth of the economy, the state can reduce taxes in order to create incentives to attract investment, to improve the live standard of citizens, etc. Rather, we can usually see the opposite picture - tax increases at low growth rates. But even with a general trend, for example, to reduce the tax burden, the situation in the extractive industries may differ - much depends on the level of world prices, changes in production conditions, etc.