The Federal Tax Service has started asking Russians with citizenship and residence permits in other countries about their foreign accounts

The mass media reported with references to lawyers and tax consultants that the Federal Tax Service (FTS) of Russia began to request information from Russian citizens regarding compliance with currency legislation. In particular, the tax authorities are now interested in the number of days spent outside Russia, citizenship or residence permit of foreign countries.

Requesting foreign account statements is a long-standing and widespread practice of the tax authorities, but information on foreign citizenship and residence permits had not previously been of interest to the tax authorities. The new requests from the Federal Tax Service contain a broader list of information than usual, including the number of border crossings of the Russian Federation.

The tax authorities request this information by sending questionnaires asking for the above data for 2022.

In these requests, the FTS indicates that the data is collected in accordance with the provisions of the federal law "On Currency Regulation and Currency Control". This law does authorize the tax authorities to conduct currency law compliance checks. 

Information on the migration status of a taxpayer is needed by the FTS to determine his residence (in particular, as a basis for determining the tax rate of tax on income of physical persons).