Usmanov-Chemezov's marking tax and impoverishment of Russia from 2021

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Beneficiaries of a unified labeling system will receive trillions of profits at the expense of citizens and manufacturers.

Since the beginning of this year, the Russian government has expanded the list of goods subject to labeling. Fur coats, medicines, baby carriages, footwear, textiles, and then dairy products and, in general, almost all consumer goods produced and imported into Russia are planned to be marked with a two-dimensional code (Data Matrix format, an analogue of a QR code) and entered into a single database of the operator established based on the principles of public-private partnership (the concept of total labeling is designed until 2024) The need to introduce this "innovation" is heralded in a mega-positive way: they say, it will help completely defeat counterfeit, create traceability of any product from the manufacturer to the end consumer and make the trade absolutely transparent. However, behind a beautiful screen lies the dark essence of the next "reform", which will enrich the comprador oligarchs close to the supreme power, rake through small and medium-sized businesses, especially farmers and other manufacturers, and increase the cost of all goods for ordinary citizens.

Participants in the market for perfumes and eau de toilette are required to register in the labeling system by March 31, 2020. Compulsory labeling of perfumery products will begin on October 1, 2020. Until February 29, 2020, participants in the camera market were also obliged to register in the unified system. From November 1, 2020, the production and import of unmarked tires, as well as their sale by turnover participants working directly with manufacturers and importers, is prohibited, TASS reports with reference to the website of the Government of the Russian Federation.

The government gives time for stores to sell unmarked stocks until January 1, 2021 - from that date, the turnover of “unmarked” goods in the light industry will be prohibited. Here is what the head of the unified operator of the system being built - the general director of Operator-CRPT Dmitry Alkhazov - tells about the work already done:

“CRPT has developed a digital platform that quickly adapts to new industries. At the end of December, 136 thousand 495 companies were registered in the system, and more than 7.2 billion codes were traced. We are ready for a manifold increase in the number of participants and transactions in the system. In the application "Honest Sign" (the name of the digital marking system), more than 2 million checks of marking codes have been carried out, the audience of the application has increased fivefold over the past three months. All new product groups have already been integrated into the application,”Alkhazov happily reports.

We are gradually getting closer to the essence of the issue. Back in mid-December 2017, President Vladimir Putin approved the idea of creating this single operator of a digital marking system for goods in Russia on the basis of Operator-CRPT LLC. This company is a subsidiary of the Center for the Development of Advanced Technologies. Most of the shares of CRPT are divided between the structures of the Rostec state corporation Sergey Chemezov, the structures of the British citizen multibillionaire Alisher Usmanov and the venture investor Alexander Galitsky, whose fund is registered in the Cayman Islands, and a certain Oksana Oreshina, a former partner of businessman Vladimir beneficiary Shcherbitsiakov in the RF (forced transfer of the entire business to online cash registers of the established form), in 2017 was found hanged in his London apartment).

Thus, the CRPT is destined for the role of a natural monopolist in the labeling reform, and he was chosen for this role without an open tender. The irony is that its shareholders are always ready to paint the country's benefits from their cunning way of making money, in fact, out of thin air:

“Transparency in the circulation of goods is needed both in the Union and in the Russian market, therefore, labeling will be introduced more and more actively. First of all, in the sectors of public consumption that are important for the safety of people - medicines, the food industry,”Chemezov said earlier.

An acquaintance of the President from the time of his joint service in the security organs in Dresden, state oligarch Sergei Chemezov has long been considered the leader of one of the most influential Kremlin clans, constantly fighting for power and concentration of all kinds of resources under his wing. Despite the "power" background, it is very difficult to call Chemezov a patriot, however, looking for patriots among the multibillionaire managers of state monopolies is generally useless. Recent independent journalistic investigations clearly show how Chemezov, through proxies, finances the "non-profitable" opposition media - RTVI and Novaya Gazeta, and even participated in sponsoring the election campaign of Ksenia Sobchak. If we are to believe the reports of insider channels in Telegram, the state oligarch at personal audiences with Putin repeatedly asked to give Rostec a key role in the marking reform. And these requests did not go unanswered. Moreover, in the Government, the marking undertaking is fully supported by "Chemezov's man" - Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov: it is his department that directs and agrees with the Prime Minister all documents on the partnership of the state with the CRPT.

The investments of the structures of Usmanov, Chemezov, Galitsky and Oreshina in the CRPT will amount to approximately 205.7 billion over 15 years, while the team plans to soon reach a yield of 16%. And this is where the fun begins - each digital label applied to the packaging of the goods that you buy in the store is guaranteed to be reflected in the price of the goods. Some analysts estimate the losses of producers / distributors at 50 kopecks per unit of goods (excluding VAT!).

In fact, the labeling mechanism has not yet been defined, either by law or by-laws. And, therefore, it is unrealistic to calculate the load on the business (one thing is to print tags on an inkjet printer, another is laser printing, etc.)

However, if you follow the calculations of blogger Sergei Druzhko, the new tax, from which no manufacturer, seller and importer of goods in the Russian Federation can escape, will annually replenish the treasury of Usmanov, Chemezov and his comrades by more than 1 trillion. rub. in year. On whose shoulders will producers and distributors pass their costs? That's right - as in the case of "Plato" (the scheme of enrichment of the Rotenberg oligarchs, in general, painfully resembles a marking scam), you and I will have to pay.

According to Druzhko's calculations, the margin for each product in the grocery basket will be at least 2.5 rubles. Taking into account the fact that, on average, each of us buys 40 different types of products in at least 100 units annually, we will now spend at least 10 thousand rubles additionally on labeled products. in a year. With clothes and other goods, the amount of expenses for citizens will increase to 20 thousand. At the same time, each of us has different appetites and opportunities, so the more goods of any kind we buy, the more we will have to pay for the Usmanov-Chemezov “innovation” …

All products from the EAEU also fall under the mandatory labeling. That is, there is a threat to the export potential of the Russian Federation and the very existence of the Eurasian community - the Armenians, Kazakhs, Belarusians and Kyrgyz will have to forcibly purchase the appropriate devices (2D scanners and software) and label all their exports to Russia. Small producers, first of all, farmers who produce the highest quality products, will get a lot of problems that can force them to leave the market altogether, which is a sad farce. After all, the labeling lobbyists are just broadcasting to us about the unprecedented quality control of products and the victory over counterfeit.

More or less independent from the federal center mass media in the regions have already realized what this whole story threatens local business, and they publish surprised and indignant opinions of entrepreneurs. Here is one of many examples - a comment from the owner of a chain of stores of workwear and tools from Nizhny Tagil:

“The code should be printed and pasted either on each pair of shoes or on the box. To transfer all the data to the tax office, all shoes need to be chipped. At the same time, footwear should be marked and reported both upon receipt from the manufacturer (when it is sent to the warehouse) and directly upon its sale. That is, I need to buy special equipment for three stores and warehouses, because from there I also ship goods. When a storekeeper sells, he must take a pair of shoes out of each box, take out the insole, scan the code, put it all back and give it to the client. We sell tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, where can we get the time to do all this? It is now illegal to trade without chips, the fine is 500 thousand rubles,”says businessman Anatoly Tolstov.

“All labeling data must be entered into the 1C program. I have version 10 of 1C. The program for this version, taking into account the marking, has not yet been written, it is only for the 11th version. And this is a completely different version, with its own subtleties, and not everyone knows how to work in it. Plus, the software itself costs money too.

And it is still unclear what to do if the buyer needs to replace or return the goods. For example, I put my shoes on a metalwork plant, but they didn’t fit. You need to make a return, exchange. What to do? Neither the tax office, nor the authorities, nor my suppliers - no one knows. And if the marriage comes, how can I get it back, if everything has already been chipped? Some vendors make QR codes on boxes. The client took the shoes, threw out the box, tried on the shoes at home again, but it did not fit. Everything, can not be returned and exchanged. At the same time, according to the law, I must change the product,”Tolstov wonders.

Many large companies are in the same embarrassment. Thus, according to the estimates of a group of companies from the Rusbrand association, leaders in the production of baby food, each of them will need about $ 30 million to introduce a labeling system, which will lead to a rise in prices by about 5%. The smaller the packaging and the larger the batch of manufactured products, the more gesheft Chemezov will receive, Usmanov and his comrades - after all, it is necessary to mark each unit of goods. Accordingly, the more the labeling will affect its value for the end user.

A huge number of retail participants will also have to buy and install CRPT-approved devices and software for reading and applying labels. This is how another barrier is put on the way of the already persecuted, taxed producers and sellers of products to the consumer. There is still no explanation of how to label products by weight: each weighed apple or carrot, loose sweets, a piece of meat or cheese cut off by the seller on the counter. But many, without any explanation, will realize that it is time to leave the "white" trade zone in the "gray" one.

What will the introduction of this "mega-innovation" system have to improve product quality? Blogger Druzhko comes to a fair conclusion: absolutely nothing. After all, anyone, even the most unscrupulous manufacturer, can buy equipment for marking, if desired. Naive people may think that cheap low-quality goods cannot be digitally coded in the same way, but in practice this is exactly what will happen. All information about the date, place of production and composition of the product can be easily found on the packaging and label today, citizens will not learn anything new. It is guaranteed to confirm the authenticity of the ingredients of a particular medicine, just as the quality of leather / fur clothing or footwear can only be verified by an examination, and not by labeling. But the semi-official media, vying with each other to brainwash the population with some kind of unprecedented "transparency", of course, prefer to remain silent about this.

Moreover, it now costs 50 kopecks to apply one code, and tomorrow public-private partners can easily increase this tax to 1, 2, 5, 15 rubles from each unit of goods - their fantasies and appetites, as we see, are limitless. The main thing is that the gesheft received from the marking will by no means go to the state budget, but will settle in the offshores of the comrades listed above.

If we go even further and just briefly assess the latest initiatives of the Government: the complete abolition of UTII (simplified tax) from 2021, a regular increase in VAT and the cost of a patent for private owners, a mandatory assessment of working conditions and a tax for self-employed, the universal forced introduction of online cash registers with crazy markups for equipment and its maintenance (of course, this did not bring any dividends to the Russian business itself), we will see that the near-power oligarchic "elite" has completely played with slaves and masters - it only has to establish a tax on rain and air, as in the famous children's fairy tale about Cipollino, which the authorities in all seriousness may soon refer to extremist literature. In the meantime, "vegetables" (or "new oil" / "human capital" - as you wish) are pickled with "Platons", "Mercury", and now also with "Honest Sign" …