The Constitutional Court of Russia finally published its ruling on a case partially validating “parallel” import. This case involved PAG, a Russian company which imported Sony trademarked products into Russia without Sony’s consent and was required to destroy these products as counterfeit

Several laws putting in place a “second capital amnesty” in Russia came into force on February 19, 2018 [1]. As previously, the main purpose is the deoffshorization of the economy and return of capital to Russia. Businessmen who did not declare their assets and accounts during the first capital amnesty in 2015 – 2016 are expected to do so now and to return their assets to Russia on completely lawful grounds without incurring any risk of being brought to tax, administrative and criminal liability

Anton Kabakov, Partner at Forte Tax & Law and co-chairman of SPIBA Financial Committee shared some transfer pricing news.

Delovoy Peterburg has published an article on Legal Forecasts or How the Market of Legal Services is Entering a Golden Age. Legal consultants discussed with Delovoy Peterburg journalists the changes expected in the legal market in 2018 as well as trends already noticeable on this market.

Anton Kabakov, Partner at Forte Tax & Law, spoke about tax practice and outlined the characteristics typical to tax law in 2018. “Tax law is the most dynamic area of law. Hundreds of amendments are introduced to tax laws every year. The main trend in 2018 is the “fight against the shadow economy” or the improvement of tax collection thanks to the fight against the shadow sector and the whitewash of the economy” comments Anton.

Anna Yakovleva, Senior Associate at Forte Tax&Law, commented on the prospects of labor law developments. Anna noted that “as if to bestow a “New Year’s gift”, the Ministry of Labor has scheduled most of its inspections in the first quarter of 2018. These labor inspections will be conducted as per a new format involving checklists, while the old practice of “one fine per single violation” will remain in place. Courts will, as a result, be flooded with cases challenging inspection results. We also expect tougher criminal sanctions on employers for delay in wage payments as well as in migration disputes arising from the 2018 World Cup.”

To read the full article, please click on this link

Dmitry Khakhaev gave a presentation on the Interaction between the Pharmaceutical Industry, Practicing Doctors and Opinion Shapers: Legal Ways of Promoting Drugs  during a meeting with the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia in St. Petersburg held to discuss sensitive issues related to antitrust regulation.

Dmitry highlighted how the legislation on advertising in the pharmaceutical industry has evolved in the United States and the European Union where it is the most developed currently. Dmitry also shared his forecast about which of these countries Russia will follow in matter of drug advertising regulation.

In his presentation, Dmitry paid particular attention to issues related to online promotion of medicines both by pharmaceutical companies and opinion shapers such as athletes, actors, writers and other influential persons.

Vyacheslav Alexandrovich Tukaev, Deputy Head of the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia in St. Petersburg, as well as representatives of the pharmaceutical industry attended this meeting during which they addressed the following questions:

‒        How to determine whether a publication or website is a specialized one in which health professionals can advertise prescription drugs?

‒        Are users, pharmacists and doctors entitled to give some positive or negative feedback on medicines in social media? Could such feedback qualify as advertising?

‒        Should pharmaceutical companies be prohibited to promote drugs through health professionals and pharmacists? And should such prohibition be extended to opinion shapers?

‒        Can pharmaceutical companies report their unique prescription drug developments, and would this be advertising?

To know more about this event please click here

The Forte Tax & Law team regularly monitors the legal services market and is always happy to share with you the latest legal trends. Today, we would like to bring to your attention Tax App, an interesting app which is getting more and more popular among tax specialists, lawyers and heads of financial departments.

On behalf of the entire Forte Tax & Law team, I would like to wish you a happy New Year and a great start to the new business season! We hope that 2018 will be filled with success and achievements. To this end, we have put together a brief overview of the most important changes to be introduced to Russian laws so that you can be forewarned, and thereby forearmed, when they come into force in 2018.

The list of state inspections scheduled for 2018 has now been published. If your company happens to be in this list of labor inspections, you will be pleased to know that from July 01, 2018 onwards the State Labor Inspectorate will conduct scheduled inspections in a new way, i.e. by using checklists. Certain employers will be subject to this new procedure as early as January 01, 2018.

Anton spoke about tax risk succession in M&A transactions (especially asset deals)

An appellate court has ruled on a second court case of transfer pricing[1]. The conclusions of this high-profile case will affect all taxpayers who have entered into cross-border transactions with related parties. This case confirms that it is necessary to thoroughly justify why a transfer pricing method has been selected over another and clearly specify the reasons for rejecting the other methods. This case also shows that approaches traditionally used to justify the selection of a certain transfer pricing method may miss the mark.