Monitoring of the Federal Legislation dated 1.12.2006

Decision of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 718 of November 27, 2006 on the Customs Tariff of the Russian Federation and the Commodity Nomenclature Used in Foreign Trade Activities

To provide for execution of obligations arising form the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System of June 14, 1983 envisaging creation of the customs statistical nomenclatures by the countries in compliance with the uniform system of description and encoding of commodities for collection of customs duties at import and export of commodities, agreements on the uniform CIS Foreign Trade Commodity Nomenclature of November 3, 1995 and on the common Foreign Trade Commodity Nomenclature of the Eurasia Economic Community of September 20, 2002 stating that the Foreign Trade Commodity Nomenclature of Russia is adopted as the common Foreign Trade Commodity Nomenclature of the Eurasia Economic Community, endorses the Customs Tariff of the Russian Federation which is a collection of rates of import customs duties systematised in compliance with the Foreign Trade Commodity Nomenclature of the Russian Federation based on international classifiers of the Harmonized Commodity Descrip tion and Coding System and the Foreign Trade Commodity Nomenclature of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The Decision is entered into force from January 1, 2007.

Order of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation No. 135n of November 7, 2006, on the Amendments to the Order of the Ministry of Finance of Russia No. 76n of September 8, 2004

Pursuant to the endorsement by the Decision of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 571 of September 16, 2006 of the rules of granting state guarantees of the Russian Federation in 2006 to render state support for export of industrial products, amends the list of documents submitted for obtaining the mentioned guarantees specified by the Order of the Ministry of Finance of Russia No. 76n of September 8, 2004.

The mentioned documents are submitted by the Russian exporter or the creditor bank to the agent bank.

The Order changes the composition of documents submitted by the Russian creditor bank. There is not need to submit a copy of the letter of the body of the foreign state with information on the intention to grant the guarantee for the borrower obligations in cases of applying for the guarantee of the Russian Federation as a security for obligations of the Russian exporter, foreign importer or a non-resident bank being residents of a foreign state that has an investment credit rating. Besides, the bank needs to present in addition proposals of another - apart from the state guarantee of the Russian Federation - security of execution of the borrower obligations under the credit contract (except for the cases of obtaining a guarantee to secure obligations of a foreign state). Also, for obtaining the state guarantee of the Russian Federation as a security of obligations of the Russian exporter to the creditor bank, it is necessary to submit a certificate of the tax body of the absence with the Russian exporter as of the most recent reporting date of arrears in the payment of taxes, fees, insurance contributions, debts in penalties, tax sanctions, interest for the use of budget resources.

The Order specifies the documents not required to get the state guarantee of the Russian Federation to secure obligations of the Russian exporter to the creditor bank. Specifies separately the list of documents submitted by foreign creditor banks.

Registered in the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation on November 29, 2006. Reg. No. 8536.

Letter of the Department of the Tax and Customs Tariff Policy of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation No. 03-05-01-04/316 of November 21, 2006

According to Subitem 1 of Item 1 of Article 212 of the Tax Code, exempted from the incomes tax from natural persons is material benefit obtained by the taxpayer in operations with credit cards during the interest-free period specified in the contract for the credit card. The notion of the "credit card" in the legislation on taxes and fees and other legislative acts is not defined.

The mentioned norm, according to the Ministry of Finance, may apply to the incomes in the form of material benefit obtained from savings in interest for the use of borrowed (credit) resources by the taxpayer obtained in operations with any bank cards, where the contracts envisage granting an interest-free period.

The contract for the pay card envisaging a credit (overdraft) feature on the client account is a mixed contract containing simultaneously elements of the bank account contract and a credit contract. Operations of crediting of holders of the pay card and operations of crediting of holders of the credit card are of the same economic nature permitting to regard them as the same type of operations.