Amendments to cause big leap of resource fees for Russian fishermen

The State Duma of the Russian Federation has adopted a bill that amends the Tax Code in terms of increasing the resource fees for the use of aquatic biological resources, according to Russia’s Federal Agency for Fishery.

The document was developed on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. The resource fees have not changed since 2004. The amendments increase the fee for capture of valuable aquatic biological resources (highly profitable), and as for non–valuable and fish species harvested for personal consumption, it is proposed to maintain the current rate of 20 rubles per metric ton.

A unified approach has been applied to determining new fees: for each aquatic species the fee is calculated at the level of 4.8% of the average price set by manufacturers when selling products from this species.

The resource fee for pollock should increase to 4,300 rubles per tonne (and the current division for the Sea of Okhotsk and other fishing areas is not provided), for cod in the Far Eastern Basin - up to 6,400 rubles per tonne. For herring, it is planned to remove the differentiation of the resource fees for the Sea of Okhotsk in the spring-summer fishing period, the Bering Sea and other areas and fishing terms from the tax code. Besides, the State Duma has approved an increase of the saury fee up to 800 rubles per tonne, although initially no growth was planned for this species.

In the Northern Basin, the resource fee for cod, for example, is increased to 7,900 rubles per tonne, for haddock - up to 4,300 rubles per tonne. In the Baltic, the fee for sprat capture will go up to 150 rubles per tonne.

The amendments provide for stimulating via preferential taxation a growth of the production volume and share in the output of value-added fish products, an increase of the efficiency and safety of fishery thanks to new fishing vessels, as well as providing raw materials to coastal fish processing enterprises. That is, benefits are supposed to be introduced for users who are engaged in the production of value-added products, work in coastal fishing mode and fish onboard new vessels built at Russian shipyards.

In addition, there is still a privilege to pay a fee for the use of aquatic biological resources at a rate of 15% for city- and settlement-forming Russian fisheries organizations. The document prescribes the procedure for determining the amount of the tax deduction, applying the deduction and confirming the validity of its application.

From 2025, the resource fees will be indexed by a deflator coefficient set for the corresponding calendar year.