IMPROVEMENT OF THE MECHANISM OF SELECTION OF SUBSOIL PLOTS TO TRANSFER TO TAX ON ADDITIONAL INCOME FROM THE EXTRACTION OF HYDROCARBONS

Abstract

Since 2019, in pilot mode (a list of pilot projects — 35 subsoil plots, the volume of production of which is about 4% of Russia’s annual oil production), a federal tax on additional income from the extraction of hydrocarbon raw materials (TAI) has come into effect. TAI refers to tax mechanisms based on economic results, in contrast to the current mineral extraction tax, where taxable items are gross indicators of the amount or cost of hydrocarbons produced. The transition from tax mechanisms based on gross figures to taxation based on economic results has been the global trend of the last fifty years. TAI can be an effective tax incentive mechanism that can ensure the involvement in the development of low-margin hydrocarbon reserves in the current taxation, as well as the introduction of promising methods to increase oil recovery. Currently, according to the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, the TAI can be applied to IV groups of subsoil plots (indicating their location and the degree of depletion of reserves). At the same time, the selection criteria for these plots do not fully take into account the tasks facing the state (budget, public, technological, etc.). Considering that the Ministry of Finance of Russia, based on the results of the implementation of pilot projects, envisages a gradual transition of the oil industry to TAI, an urgent task is to improve the selection mechanism of mining projects to provide this tax preference, including by developing a comprehensive system of selection criteria and a transparent methodology for ranking projects. The proposed approach to competitive selection of subsoil plots for transfer to TAI is based on weighted sum and combinatorial optimization methods.