Subject: [CivilSoc] U.S. Aid Workers Remain Tax Free
From: Al Decie (agdecie@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Dec 21 2000 - 11:20:13 EST
Moscow Times
Thursday, Dec. 21, 2000. Page 3
U.S. Aid Workers Remain Tax Free
By Anna Badkhen
Staff Writer Hundreds of American employees in government-funded aid
programs across Russia have one less problem to worry about after the
government on Wednesday pledged to uphold a bilateral treaty exempting them
from taxes.
The agreement, signed by the United States and Russia in 1992, was never
formally ratified by the State Duma and therefore not officially valid.
But American aid workers have considered the agreement active and never paid
Russian taxes.
Doubt was cast on the practice last summer when an American working for a
U.S.-funded nonprofit group in Siberia lost his visa amid a dispute over his
taxes.
Al Decie’s visa was seized by the Krasnoyarsk visa and registration
department, which said he would only get the visa back after he paid Russian
taxes.
The visa was eventually returned to him and he left Russia this month.
But the dispute may have played a role in the Russian authorities’ decision
Wednesday to send an official document to the U.S. government under which it
agreed to give a tax-exempt status to Americans working for state-backed
nonprofit groups.
The U.S. State Department gave the Kremlin an ultimatum earlier this month,
saying it would recommend the recall of all its aid workers by Jan. 1 if the
Russians did not deliver a document promising to uphold the 1992 agreement.
Such an action could have resulted in the cancellation of all American aid
projects across Russia.
The U.S. government has given more than $60 billion in assistance to Russia
over the past 10 years.
"We want the document to say that [these] U.S. citizens would not be subject
to taxation as we have agreed in the past," an official at the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow said Thursday afternoon.
Late Thursday evening a diplomatic source told The Moscow Times that the
document has been signed.
Russian government officials could not be reached for comment Thursday
evening.
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
_______________________________________________
CivilSoc mailing list
CivilSoc@friends-partners.org
http://fpmail.friends-partners.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/civilsoc
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a22 : Sat Dec 30 2000 - 16:48:01 EST