Transport tax may be collected unilaterally out of court

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is working on a draft law providing for an out-of-court procedure for collecting transport tax from citizens.  The measure is being developed in connection with the predominantly indisputable nature of the debt, as well as due to the need to reduce the workload of justices of the peace.

A statement on the draft law being prepared was made by the Chairman of the Council of Judges of the Russian Federation Viktor Momotov within the framework of a meeting of the expert club named after D.N. Zamyatnin, reports ‘Rossiyskaya Gazeta’.

The idea of the legal development is that the decision on the collection of the transport tax should be sent by the tax authority to the citizen, who has the right to respond with his objections within a month from the moment it was received.

The objections may may be related to disagreement with the amount or the very existence of the tax. If objections are received, the issue of debt collection will be referred to the judicial authority.

It is assumed that such a procedure will simplify the collection in the situations of undisputed debts, while giving the persons the right to challenge it in case of disagreement.

Justifying his position, Viktor Momotov announced statistics, according to which, in only 9 months of the outgoing year, justices of the peace considered 2 million 800 thousand cases on the collection of tax debts from citizens. Moreover, only about 5% of such judicial acts were challenged.