How to issue a tax deduction through the FTS website: step-by-step instructions

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

It is very easy to return part of the funds transferred to the state.

What is tax deduction

By law, Russians must give the state 13% of their earnings in the form of personal income tax. However, in some cases, the money will be refunded if a tax deduction is issued.

This can be done through your employer. In this case, you will not have to pay personal income tax for some time. But many people prefer to first regularly transfer personal income tax, and then contact the tax office and return the entire amount of the deduction in full.

If earlier this required going to the FTS in person, now you can quickly and simply submit a 3 ‑ NDFL declaration through the tax website.

Since 2021, the Federal Law of April 20, 2021 No. 100-FZ “On Amendments to Parts One and Two of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation”, a simplified tax deduction procedure, has also appeared. Thanks to him, you no longer need to collect documents and prove to the Federal Tax Service the right to return part of the money. The service itself will receive data about what you are entitled to, and then notify you.

Let's deal with both methods.

How to file a declaration and draw up a deduction on the FTS website

1. Go to your personal account

You can log in to the tax office in three ways:

• Using your login and password from your personal account. To get them, you need to personally contact the tax office with a passport.
• Using a qualified electronic signature (ES), if you already have one. If not, this is the most difficult and unreasonable option for an ordinary taxpayer. It is issued in a certification center accredited by the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of Russia, and it is stored on a hard disk, USB key or smart card.
• With the help of a username and password from "Gosuslug". The easiest way. If you do not have an account, it is more optimal to get access to it, and not to the personal account of the FTS website, since the login and password from Gosuslug will come in handy in many situations.

2. Issue a strengthened unqualified electronic signature, if it is not there

Click on your last name, first name and patronymic to go to your profile page.

Scroll down to "Receive EP".

Choose where you will store the electronic signature key: on your computer or in the secure system of the Federal Tax Service of Russia. In the second case, you will be able to use the digital signature on any device, including mobile.

Check the correctness of your data, create a password and submit a request. Issuance of an ES usually takes several days. Here you can register a qualified ES, if you have one. Then you do not need to issue another signature.

When the ES is issued, the following field will appear on the same page:

Please note: the signature has a validity period. Then the procedure will have to be repeated.

3. Select the items "Life situations" → "Submit a 3 ‑ personal income tax return" → "Fill in online"

A form for filling out the declaration will open.

4. Enter your personal information

Determine which tax authority you are filing your return to. If the column has not been filled in automatically, you can clarify this at.

Choose which year you want to file your return for. The available ones are indicated in the dropdown list.

Indicate if you are filing for the first time this year. If not, write what version of the document it is.

Check if you are a tax resident. To do this, you need to be in Russia 183 days a year for which you are filing a declaration. If you are a non-resident, you are not entitled to a deduction.

5. Report income

Employers are required to send your income data to the tax office by April 1. If your employer has already done this, then the corresponding fields will be filled in automatically.

If not, click on the Add Income Source button and enter the required information manually. The data is on the 2 ‑ NDFL certificate, which you will have to take if your employer has not yet had time to report your income (more on this below).

6. Select deduction

Lifehacker wrote about the types of deductions in detail in a separate article. In short:

• Property - when buying a home, building a house, paying off interest on a mortgage loan, buying out your property for municipal and state needs.
• Standard - for parents and adoptive parents, disabled people, Heroes of Russia, liquidators of the Chernobyl accident.
• Social - for education, treatment, charity, insurance, including non-state pension.
• Investment - if you have credited money to an individual investment account.
• When carrying forward losses from operations with securities, derivative financial instruments, from participation in an investment partnership.

Several categories can be selected at the same time. But remember that more than you paid in the form of personal income tax, you will still not be refunded.

7. Add details of what qualifies you for a tax refund

For example, if you are drawing up a property deduction, enter the data on the purchased object and the purchase and sale agreement.

If standard - about yourself and / or about children.

If social - enter the amount spent in the required column (it must be confirmed with documents).

8. Specify the details by which you will be refunded

Account data can be entered at this stage, or you can skip the step and then submit a separate application. You need to know the account number, BIC and full name of the bank. All this is easy to find out in the personal account of the bank or in the mobile application. If you do not have access to one or the other, you will have to look for an agreement to open an account or visit a bank branch.

9. Prepare your declaration for shipment

At the last stage, you will see how much money you are willing to return. Here it is 6, 5 thousand, since, according to legend, a deduction for training in the amount of 50 thousand rubles was declared. In addition, you can download the declaration already on the form to check it again for errors.

Add documents supporting the deduction eligibility. Make sure that the papers are in JPG, JPEG, TIF, TIFF, PNG, PDF format and weigh no more than 10 MB each. The maximum size of all attached files should not exceed 20 MB.

Now the FTS portal itself offers a list of documents that the department would like to receive. Previously, you had to find out the list yourself.

If your 2 ‑ NDFL certificates are already in the tax base (and you found this out when filling out information on income), you do not need to attach them separately. If the data is not yet available, in the "Additional documents" section, attach 2 ‑ NDFL - the requirements are the same as for other securities.

It remains to enter the password from the electronic signature and send the documents for verification.

10. Watch for reports from the tax

You will be kept informed of the status of your declaration.

If everything is in order with her, then within a month you will be issued a deduction. But the tax office also has the right to conduct a desk audit, and then the process will take three months from the date of receipt of the documents. The countdown is carried out not from the day the declaration was sent, but from the moment when it was accepted. The status can also be viewed by selecting the menu items "Life situations" → "Submit a 3-NDFL declaration" → "Fill in online".

If something goes wrong, they will send you a message or call the inspector. In some cases, it will be sufficient to send the missing documents to the department. If there were any inaccuracies in the declaration, you will have to submit it again.

11. Issue a refund if you haven't done so earlier

Item for those who skipped the eighth step.

If the tax office has reported on the completion of the audit, including a cameral one, it is time to draw up an application for a refund. To do this, select My Taxes → Overpayment. The overpayment line will indicate the amount you can refund.

You will be prompted to set off the overpayment against tax arrears, if you have one.

If not, go to the next step and fill out the return application. You need to specify the details of the account to which the money will come.

It remains to confirm the data and wait. The money will come within a month.

How to get a tax deduction in a simplified manner

This method is only suitable for processing investment and property deductions. According to the plan, the tax banks and brokers will send information to the Federal Tax Service that clients have bought real estate and invested money. Employers send information about income to the department and so. Based on these data, the tax office will determine who is entitled to a refund of part of the funds, and notify about it.

To get a tax deduction simplified, you do not need to do anything. All that remains is to wait until a notification appears in your personal account on the FTS website that you have the appropriate right. A pre-filled application will be sent with this message. It will need to be signed - probably with an electronic signature, with which we figured out above - and sent.

The tax office promises to consider the application in no more than a month and transfer the money within 15 days.

True, there is an important nuance in this regard. Banks and brokers must report your expenses to the IRS to submit a statement. But for organizations, this is an opportunity, not a duty. To transfer data, they need to join the information exchange system. So far, neither banks nor brokers are in a hurry to do this.

So there are not many chances to wait for a notification from the tax office in the near future. Don't count on it if you bought or invested in 2019 or earlier. The simplified procedure applies only to expenses made in 2020 and later.

If the waiting time does not suit you, you can still apply for a deduction by filing a tax return.

This article was posted on October 20, 2019. In June 2021, we updated the text.