Any import into Russia must be subject to a fair duty, so the country does not require any duty-free trade thresholds, as they distort the real picture of foreign trade. This was announced on March 21 by the acting head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Ruslan Davydov.
“If you want my personal opinion, I’ve been talking about this for 8 years, and at the World Trade Organization, when we presided, they talked about it, that there shouldn’t be any thresholds at all,” Davydov is quoted as saying TASS.
He noted that the situation when goods enter the Russian Federation without duties and are not subject to taxation “prevents the development of domestic industry,” he adds “Gazeta.Ru”.
In addition, the acting head of the Federal Customs Service believes that the measure to increase the duty-free import of goods for e-commerce from €200 to €1 thousand in 2022, amid fears of a shortage in the Russian Federation due to Western sanctions, was an emergency in this situation.
“The reason for collecting customs duties is the movement of goods across the customs border. Before our eyes, a new type of trade has developed – electronic trade in goods, when a person does not cross the border, but the goods do. But the goods are traveling across the border. The goods are foreign. Therefore, it should be fairly taxed,” Davydov noted.
Earlier on March 21, it was reported that federal retailers are asking to reduce the duty-free trade standard – the threshold of €1 thousand should be revised by April 1. The Association of Retail Trade Companies (AKORT), sent to the government, notes that the domestic market is already saturated with foreign goods and there is no need to stimulate foreign manufacturers.
In March 2022, the Russian Federation temporarily increased the threshold for duty-free import of goods purchased from foreign online stores five times, to €1 thousand. The authorities did this in order to avoid a shortage of essential goods during the period of sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation.
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