Are cryptocurrencies subject to civil rights in the Russian Federation
Yes, they are.
The list of objects of civil rights is specified in :
“Objects of civil rights include things, including cash and documentary securities, other property, including non-cash funds, book-entry securities, property rights; results of work and provision of services; protected results of intellectual activity and equivalent means of individualization (intellectual property); intangible benefits”
As can be seen from the text of the law, this list is not exclusive, and it includes any property rights, the results of work and the provision of services, and even intangible benefits (example: “you will sing to me, and I will dance to you” is an exchange of intangible benefits)
Frequent statements that “there is no definition of cryptocurrency in the legislation of the Russian Federation and therefore transactions with them are illegal” are illiterate.
In principle, legislation should not, and cannot contain, a definition of all possible objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality, except when certain activities or operations with certain objects require special regulation or prohibition.
Thus, the absence of a definition in the legislation just indicates that the legislator did not consider it necessary to introduce special regulation or prohibition of the relevant operations. For example, the legislation of the Russian Federation does not contain the concepts of “goose” or “telling stories”, but this in no way means that selling geese or telling stories for money is illegal on the territory of the Russian Federation
By its nature, receiving or transferring cryptocurrency is making an entry in a distributed data registry, and in this sense it is similar to buying and selling a domain name, which is also nothing more than an entry in a distributed data registry. At the same time, the domain name has an established practice of use, and even judicial practice in resolving disputes about the ownership of a domain name.
See also: .
Are cryptocurrencies a “money surrogate”
No, they are not.
The concept of “money surrogate” is used only in Art. 27 ch. VI “Organization of cash circulation” And as the title of this chapter suggests, it belongs to the realm cash circulation, that is, it prohibits giving functions cash anything other than Russian rubles issued by the Bank of Russia.
This is also evidenced by law enforcement practice in the Russian Federation. So, the well-known “case of kolions” (a civil case on the suit of the Yegorievsk city prosecutor’s office against citizen M. Yu. Shlyapnikov on recognizing as illegal the use of , in which the Yegoryevsk City Court of the Moscow Region recognized the existence of the issue of “money surrogates” referred specifically to cash “kolions” After which Shlyapnikov issued non-cash kolions on the Emercoin blockchain, and the prosecutor’s office apparently no longer objects to this.
Note: It should be noted that the law enforcement practice in the Russian Federation does not classify bills, metro tokens, casino chips, gold as “money surrogates”
Position of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation
The press service of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation issued several informational messages
related to cryptocurrencies:
1) ,
2) ,
For which the following can be said:
These documents are published by the press service, are not signed or registered by anyone, and legally cannot be considered as something having any normative value or something applicable in the interpretation of the law (see. ), which obviously should be interpreted as the absence of a regulatory position of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation on this issue.
Notwithstanding the above, the texts of the above-mentioned press releases are:
a) do not contain a direct statement that cryptocurrencies are a monetary surrogate,
b) do not contain statements that operations with cryptocurrency are prohibited in the Russian Federation
c) do not contain a statement that banks and non-bank credit organizations should not service transactions in which cryptocurrencies are used
See also:
That is, if we simulate a situation in which a bank would like to refuse a client to make a payment under a contract providing for the paid transfer of cryptocurrency, and the client would insist on making a payment, then the above press service messages would not be sufficient to justify the legal position of the bank, and thus more than to protect the bank from a possible claim for the recovery of losses related to the groundless refusal of the client to conduct a banking operation.
Are individuals and legal entities residents of the Russian Federation allowed to operate with cryptocurrencies.
Yes, they are.
The main official document on this issue is (text is also on ), which states:
“the legislation of the Russian Federation does not contain a ban on the conduct by Russian citizens and organizations of operations using cryptocurrency”
Enterprises, banks and non-banking credit institutions have neither reason nor authority to reject the official position of the RF Ministry of Finance and the RF Federal Tax Service on this issue.
See also:
Are cryptocurrencies “foreign currencies”
In accordance with the provisions of the Federal Law of December 10.12.2003, 173 N XNUMX-FZ "On currency regulation and currency control" () bitcoin, ether etc. are not a foreign currency, respectively, the restrictions provided for the use of settlements in foreign currency do not apply to settlements in these conventional units.
This is also confirmed by the Letter of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation dated October 3, 2016 N OA-18-17 / 1027:
“the current currency control system does not provide for the receipt by currency control authorities (the Bank of Russia, the Federal Tax Service of Russia, the Federal Customs Service of Russia) and currency control agents (authorized banks and professional participants in the securities market that are not authorized banks) from residents and non-residents of information on cryptocurrency purchase and sale transactions ”
Thus, cryptocurrencies are not "foreign currency" in the sense of the current legislation of the Russian Federation and transactions with them are not associated with the relevant restrictions and regulation. This means, however, that such transactions are subject to VAT as a general rule.
How to reflect cryptocurrency in accounting
Cryptocurrency does not fall under the definition of “intangible asset” according to )
Since, in order to be recognized as an intangible asset, an object must meet the following requirements (paragraphs “d”, “e”, paragraph 3 of section I. RAS 14/2007):
“d) the object is intended to be used for a long time, i.e. useful life, lasting more than 12 months or normal operating cycle, if it exceeds 12 months;
e) the entity does not intend to sell the property within 12 months or the normal operating cycle if it exceeds 12 months;
Cryptocurrency can be considered in accounting as a financial investment according to
According to PBU 19.02:
“The financial investments of the organization include: state and municipal securities, securities of other organizations, including debt securities, in which the date and cost of redemption is determined (bonds, bills); contributions to the authorized (share) capital of other organizations (including subsidiaries and affiliates); loans granted to other organizations, deposits in credit institutions, receivables acquired on the basis of assignment of the right to claim, etc.”
In this case, the list is not exhaustive, and the term “ex.” (other) may also include cryptocurrency. At the same time, pure cryptocurrencies (ether, bitcoin) are of course not securities (however, other tokens on the blockchain may be such in some cases)
Accordingly, it is proposed to display cryptocurrency in accounting on account 58 “Financial investments” () For this, you can create a special subaccount or subaccounts of 58 accounts.
Those. when buying cryptocurrency (bitcoin, ether) for foreign currency, we credit 52 “Currency accounts”, debit 58 “Financial investments”.
When selling cryptocurrencies for Russian rubles, we respectively debit Account 51 “Settlement accounts” (if for currency - 52 “Currency accounts”, if for cash rubles - 50 “Cashier”), and credit 58 “Financial investments”
Socio-political aspects, and recommendations for implementation
It is assumed that the initial transactions with cryptocurrency should be carried out in small amounts, and perhaps not with bitcoin, which sometimes appears in private statements of officials, but with ether, which not only does not appear in such statements in a negative context, but, on the contrary, has evidence of indirect approval from the top leadership of the Russian Federation. Founder of the Ethereum project , and it was also received by the President of the Russian Federation, which of course could not have taken place if there had not been a favorable attitude of the leadership of the Russian Federation towards the Ethereum project.
In addition, it can be assumed that in the long term, Ethereum has greater growth potential with the expansion of the use of smart contracts on the Ethereum platform. It should also be taken into account that, unlike bitcoin, ether has a utilitarian use as a “fuel” (gas) when deploying and executing smart contracts on the Ethereum platform, and as such it is necessary for organizations involved in the development and / or study of smart contracts on the blockchain . In addition, the exchange of one cryptocurrency for another, for example, eth to btc, is available automatically on platforms like shapeshift.io
Options for conducting transactions for the acquisition of cryptocurrency by residents of the Russian Federation
Direct purchase of cryptocurrency for foreign currency.
In this case, an agreement is concluded between a non-resident (for example, an offshore company) and a resident of the Russian Federation that the resident of the Russian Federation transfers funds to the non-resident in US dollars or euros, and the non-resident ensures that entries are made in the Ethereum distributed registry about the transfer to the address specified in the agreement at Ethereum network, owned by a legal or natural person - a resident of the Russian Federation, the amount of ether or bitcoins specified in the contract.
A possible option is also to use a transferable letter of credit for settlements. The bank opens a letter of credit in favor of an offshore company upon crediting to the address specified in the contract in the Ethereum or Bitcoin network the amount of cryptocurrency specified in the contract, and the offshore company transfers the payment to the cryptocurrency providers.
Transfer of funds for trust management to an offshore fund that makes financial investments in the interests of the client, including in cryptocurrencies, in the interests of the client.
In this case, formally, an offshore investment fund owns the cryptocurrency, in which a company that is a resident of the Russian Federation acquires a share. At the same time, a scheme can be built in which a company - a resident of the Russian Federation also receives a private key and password for managing an account on Ethereum, or otherwise gets the opportunity to “cash out” (i.e. withdraw in the form of cryptocurrency) its share in the fund at any time. In this option, it is possible for a bank (or a non-bank credit institution) to make a client payment easier, since the payment under the agreement is made not for cryptocurrency, but for a share in an investment fund (which is more common for banks), while the name of the investment fund may appear in the agreement , and not cryptocurrencies directly, and a reference to the conditions for its operation.
In accounting, as shown above, a legal entity reflects its investments on 58 “Financial investments”, and when converting a deposit into cryptocurrency, you can simply transfer it to another sub-account 58 of the account.
Source: habr.com