"Cloud" Tax To Be Imposed After All

However, nobody understands how to collect it so far.

Both chambers of the “parliament” have adopted amendments to the Tax Code, according to which, in particular, a VAT on turnover from the sale of e-services, rendered by foreign companies on the territory of Belarus, is to be introduced.

VAT will be imposed on almost all services provided via the Internet, in particular, on the use of e-books, listening to music, selling information, IP-telephony (including such systems as Skype, Viber), sale of games, etc.

But now the officials face a problem – how to collect this tax, because most companies do not have representative offices in Belarus, they haven’t even heard of our country and have no idea that we want to collect taxes from them for our budget, the website belaruspartisan.org writes.

However, according to the Belarusian Minister of Finance Uladzimir Amaryn, such tax is a global practice. Abroad, such tax is sometimes called a “cloud tax”. The Minister said that the similar procedure for levying the VAT has been in use in the EU since 2015, and a similar tax is to be introduced in Russia starting from 2017.

In Belarus, these provisions will enter into force in 2018, which “gives the time to study the global practice of levying the VAT on such services.” In reality, this time is given to invent a trick of how to raise the money at least from someone.

Let us remind that if a foreign company has no representative offices on the territory of Belarus, it is not obliged to obey our laws.