Recycling tax may be waived

The Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy has developed a bill to abolish one of the taxes in Russia. We are talking about the abolition of personal income tax from the income of individuals for the delivery of glass and plastic bottles for processing, according to the newspaper "Vedomosti". The authors of the document believe that the current situation prevents retail chains from installing fandomats for receiving recyclable materials.

On the other hand, they have been trying to abolish personal income tax from the disposal of recyclable materials for 20 years, recalled Alexey Kiselev, head of the toxic department of Greenpeace in Russia. “Low-income people are really engaged in the delivery of containers for money,” he stated. Kiselev also stressed that in fact, at present, no one pays tax on income for the delivery of bottles for processing. In his opinion, this a priori cannot be a profitable operation.

You can give recyclable materials in special devices in stores. Retail chains, however, are in no hurry to lure customers with promotions and bonuses for the delivery of bottles, said the chairman of the committee Andrei Kutepov (United Russia). “Such reception points as fandomats and the ability to receive money for recyclable materials for the population are an integral part of creating a circular economy,” said Denis Butsaev, CEO of the Russian environmental operator. He believes that in this case, the tax acts as a barrier.

However, at this time, the return money cannot be directly credited to a person's account as this would be considered taxable income. So, bonus rubles from fandomats go, for example, to the accounts of transport cards or charitable foundations.

In 2019, Dmitry Medvedev, who at that time served as the country's prime minister, instructed the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Economic Development to work out an initiative to resume the practice of putting bottles in stores. It was assumed that this should contribute to solving environmental problems in the country, among which the number one issue is garbage.

Source: https://lenta.ru/