The Ministry of Finance proposed to temporarily ease the conditions for VAT exemption for small catering businesses.

Deputy Minister of Finance Alexey Sazanov presented an amendment to the Tax Code (TC) at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes. Starting from 2025, organizations and individual entrepreneurs (IP) on the simplified tax system (STS) with income exceeding 60 million rubles became VAT payers (Federal Law No. 176-FZ). From 2026, this threshold is reduced to 20 million rubles (Federal Law No. 425-FZ). As a result, a significant part of small businesses that were previously exempt from paying VAT became VAT payers. However, according to paragraph 38 of clause 3 of Article 149 of the Tax Code, catering services can be exempt from VAT if three conditions are met simultaneously: the income for the previous year does not exceed 3 billion rubles, the share of income from catering is at least 70%, and the average monthly salary of employees is not lower than the regional average for the type of activity class 56 OKVED "provision of food and beverage service activities." ...