• приобретаемые товары, работы и услуги должны использоваться в деятельности, облагаемой НДС, или в некоторых определенных видах деятельности, включая экспорт;
• у налогоплательщика есть счет-фактура НДС, заполненный в соответствии с законодательством;
• налогоплательщик представил отчет по НДС, содержащий информацию об объемах операций, применимой ставке НДС для указанных операций и налоговой базе за отчетный налоговый период.

At the same time, in the EU regulations, there are no requirements regarding the filing of any supporting documents proving the legitimacy of an application of a reduced VAT rate for exports. This partially confirms the problem of documentary proof of reduced VAT rates for exporters in a situation when control over its administration is tightened—it is precisely that problem which the present study attempts to resolve.

Most countries with a significant share of the global exports volume share certain common fundamentals of export VAT taxation, but each jurisdiction has its own specifics. Legislative provisions of the Russian Federation have the highest similarity to the European approach of export regulation—this is explainable by the fact that both regulatory systems have been generally guided by the OECD recommendations (van Doesum and Nellen 2021). At the same time, the Russian Federation employs an approach that is more demanding from the taxpayer’s viewpoint in terms of documenting the fact of exportation. Thus, there is a need for transparent procedures enabling the sustainable operation of exporters and their interaction with foreign counterparties.

In the current situation, it is necessary to develop more detailed requirements for the taxpayers’ confirmation of the fact that a service has been rendered, so that the taxpayers could efficiently interact with foreign counterparties to obtain the documents required. Such rules could be specified directly in the Russian Federation Tax Code; these rules could be introduced in part 4 of Article 148 of the Russian Federation Tax Code or alternatively, an official detailed clarification from the Federal Tax Service (FTS of Russia) could be developed, similar to the document referred below and listing detailed requirements for confirmation of a taxpayer’s compliance with counterparty verification rules (Letter of the Federal Tax Service of 10 March 2021. No BV-4-7/3060).13

Taking into consideration the established practice, in addition to the contract with the counterparty, the following documents should be included in the list of required documents: the acceptance certificate describing the services rendered with detailed breakdown by each specific type of service, the service provider’s report with a description of services and forms of provision of deliverables of services rendered, and other documents confirming provision of services using the template provided in the report. Additionally, the official clarification of the Russian Federation Federal Tax Service should provide examples of other potentially suitable documents: a service order from a foreign entity; files containing consultations, research results, and other information in text form; a schedule of events and presentation materials for such events; materials for training sessions conducted; screenshots of software programs provided for use, etc.

The revision of tax legislation is necessary for taxpayers to be able to efficiently and correctly draft and execute their contracts with foreign counterparties. Currently, this process is complicated by the imprecise wording in the legislation and by the possibility of the reclassification of one type of contract into another type by Russian tax authorities.

As researchers established earlier, exports of goods for which R&D work was required or for which a transfer of usage rights from the performer of work to the end user is necessary, may still be subject to tax disputes—specifically in the aspect of offsetting the input VAT. Russian tax legislation stipulates that any R&D work, including certain pre-defined elements of work, and the transfer of usage rights performed on the basis of a licensing agreement, are exempt from taxation.

Due to specifics of subjective interpretation of Russian tax legislation, certain taxpayers offset the full amount of input VAT on R&D work performed, provided said work was required for the creation and further sale of goods being exported, and also on a transfer of rights of use of intellectual property. Such a transfer was performed under the contract for sale and purchase as a measure to ensure that the goods have their required functionality and are capable to be used for a specific purpose.

On the one hand, this approach is in stark contradiction to the legal norms established by the Russian Federation Tax Code. On the other hand, taxpayers perform these operations under a sale-purchase agreement, taking the other parties of this agreement only as a manufacturing process to create export goods for which there is a zero rate of VAT. As a result, both sides of the tax dispute have grounds for defending their own positions based on subjective understanding of the rules of the tax legislation.

With the purpose of establishing a unified approach to understanding the rules of tax legislation, researchers hereby suggest to amend a number of articles of the Russian Federation Tax Code; these amendments would more precisely define, for the taxpayers’ benefit, the interpretation of the approach, which is also supported by the application and interpretation of tax law. Specifically, the approach consists of identifying the costs of R&D work carried out or of the usage rights transferred under the contract for sale and purchase; afterwards the amount of such separate costs is subsequently used to correctly determine the amount of input VAT that could be offset.

Another controversial VAT taxation issue that was examined in current study is the taxation of transactions in which the transfer of goods to a foreign counterparty is performed under a processing contract involving customer-supplied raw materials.

International organizations with manufacturing cycles divided into separate companies located in different countries are frequently encountered in the business world today (van Doesum and Nellen 2021). Thus, it is important to have sufficiently detailed legislative provisions defining the nature of work in this area, including the provisions of the tax law. Researchers posit that it is necessary to provide more details in the provisions of the Russian Federation Tax Code to facilitate an understanding of methods used for VAT taxation of operations involving the transfer of customer-owned raw materials to a foreign entity with any possible type of documentation.

As was already established, such transactions could be documented in different ways, and may have a key impact on the tax treatment of that transaction. At the same time, there is no clarity regarding the taxation of certain types of operations involving the transfer of customer-owned raw materials because of the ambiguity of the term “exportation”. There is no certainty whether the raw materials, that were earlier transferred to a foreign entity, could be considered exported and have their permanent location outside of the territory of the Russian Federation.

In view of the above considerations, researchers propose to introduce a separate type of agreement—a “services contract for processing of raw materials transferred by a customer”. This type of contract must be introduced in Chapter 37 of the Russian Federation Civil Code. In the Articles forming that Chapter of the Russian Federation Civil Code, the main rules for documenting such types of transactions must be provided. At the same time, it is necessary to also amend the Russian Federation Tax Code; proposed amendments would set the general rules for VAT taxation of transactions involving the transfer of customer-owned raw materials: