Associate Professor Leonid Krutakov from the University of Finance said in an opinion column: ng.ru“The depreciation payments deducted by the Ministry of Finance to oil companies as of September 1 have not yet been reflected in the data published by the ministry on Wednesday.”
“Due to the high prices of oil products, the authorities’ payments to oil workers for September will effectively be 0,” he added.
“All payments for the dumper go as part of the return to the country’s budget of the mining tax paid by oil workers,” Krutakov said.
According to him, the oil industry is the only raw materials industry in Russia that pays essentially progressive taxes.
“The level of extraction tax depends on the export price of oil. If we turn to the same data published by the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday, we can easily calculate that in the January-September period, oil workers paid 5.038 trillion rubles in mining taxes to the Russian budget. Thus, the state returned only 22.6 percent of this amount to the companies in the form of tippers. “If we take into account customs duties on exports of oil and oil products amounting to 262 billion rubles in nine months, this rate will be even smaller,” Krutakov said.
According to him, the mining tax applies only to mining companies, and all sales companies benefit from the effect of depreciation payments to reduce domestic prices.
“The volume of export supplies among vertically integrated Russian oil companies also varies greatly. Lukoil’s sales infrastructure is built to export “its” fuel through a system of product pipelines. Surgutneftegaz exports 85 percent of its diesel. And Rosneft, for example, the backbone of the industry, sells all Euro-5 gasoline produced on the domestic market,” said Krutakov.
He also noted that the tipper is purchased in equal quantity by both companies focused on supplying the domestic market and those looking to maximize their revenue through export supply.
“The Ministry of Finance acts as a regulator of the flow of “other people’s” money. It should be remembered that the tax burden on the Russian oil industry is 78%, an unprecedented rate for the entire world. Taking into account increasing transportation costs, electricity and bank loan rates, the general level of withdrawal rates is above 90%. Only one company, Rosneft, has paid over 4 trillion rubles to the budget of the Russian Federation in 2022, and 18 trillion rubles over the past five years,” Krutakov concluded.