How to pay less taxes

1. Get a tax deduction

If you work officially under an employment contract, then your employer pays 13% tax on the salary of each employee. So, if it were not for the tax, instead of 30,000 rubles, you would receive 34,500 in your hands.

However, part of the tax paid can be refunded. If you spent money on medical treatment, buying your first property, or educating yourself and your children, you can get a tax deduction.

You can return 13% of the amount for all expenses, but not more than 15,600 rubles and not more than you paid taxes.

It is impossible to predict in advance how much money will be spent on treatment or education. Therefore, the tax deduction is obtained once a year. To do this, you need to collect documents confirming the costs of treatment and training, and then take them to your employer, to the tax office, or submit them online to the Federal Tax Service.

There are a few things to consider:

If you spent more than 120,000 rubles a year on treatment or education, you can only receive a deduction for 120,000 - that's 15,600 rubles.
If the money went to educate a child, you can get a deduction from a maximum of 170,000 rubles, for two children - from 190,000.
You cannot get more money than you paid in taxes. If you earned only 100,000 rubles in a year, and spent 120,000 on treatment and training, you will be able to return 13% only from 100,000 to 13,000, not 15,600.
The tax deduction can be received no later than three years after spending. Moreover, if you studied for three years and applied for a deduction at once for the entire period, then you will not receive more than 15,600 rubles. It is wiser to do this annually in order to squeeze out the maximum amount.
The tax deduction is not available to the unemployed, self-employed, civil workers and individual entrepreneurs.

There is also a property tax deduction with a limit not of 120,000 rubles, but of two million - you can return 13% and up to 260,000 from the purchase of the first apartment. The property deduction is paid gradually. If you bought an apartment for two million and paid only 50,000 taxes this year, you will get those 50,000 back, and the remaining 210,000 will be paid to you in the following years.

2. Open an IP with a rate of 6%

Instead of working for an employer and deducting 13% of taxes to the state, you can open an individual entrepreneur with a tax rate of 6% and conclude an agreement with the head for the provision of services. Then the management will be able to pay you more, and you yourself will transfer less taxes. In addition, with individual entrepreneurs it is easier to earn some money on the side.

Please note that sole proprietors are not eligible for a tax deduction.

There is a pitfall: in addition to the 6% tax, you will have to pay contributions to the pension fund and health insurance yourself. In 2019, you will need to pay 36,238 rubles, regardless of income, even if the employer suddenly terminates the contract with you.

However, there is a special opportunity for individual entrepreneurs: contributions that have already been paid can be deducted from the amount of taxes due. That is, if you earned 600,000 rubles in a year, you must pay 36,000 in tax. But you have already transferred 36,238 rubles of contributions, so there is no need to pay taxes at all. If the income is higher, you will still have to pay some tax, but you can also deduct the amount of the paid contributions on time from it.

For example, let's compare how much an employee and an individual entrepreneur will receive in a year at the same salary.

	Salaried worker	IP on a simplified system
Received money before all taxes and deductions	600,000 rubles	600,000 rubles
Tax	13% - 78,000 rubles	6% - 36,000 rubles
Pension fund contributions	22% - 132,000 rubles	RUB 29 354 fixed
Compulsory health insurance contributions	5.1% - 30 600 rubles	6 884 rubles fixed
Social security contributions	2, 9% - 17 400 rubles	-
The sum of all deductions	258,000 rubles	36,238 rubles of contributions. You won't have to pay tax - contributions go to his account as a deduction
Money on hand	342,000 rubles - 28,500 per month	563,762 rubles - almost 47,000 per month

The work of an individual entrepreneur looks much more profitable, but remember: if the employer terminates the contract with you, and there are no other clients, you will still have to pay 36,238 rubles in contributions, even if there is no profit.

3. Work as self-employed with 4% tax

If you live and work in Moscow, the Moscow and Kaluga regions or Tatarstan, then from the beginning of 2019 you can take part in the experiment. Federal Law No. 422-FZ dated November 27, 2018 the city of federal significance Moscow, in the Moscow and Kaluga regions, as well as in the Republic of Tatarstan (Tatarstan) - to become self-employed with a tax of only 4%, without deductions for pensions and medical insurance.

This status can be acquired by a person who receives money for his work, but does not have an employer or employees. There are restrictions: you cannot be a self-employed lawyer or engage in the resale of goods. But if you are a designer, programmer, or do your hair at home, this mode is for you.

It might be interesting:

Individual entrepreneurs who now pay 6% tax. They will be able to deduct 4% of income from individuals and not make insurance premiums. In this case, you do not need to close the IP.
People who were thinking of changing their office to their own business. Now you can go free floating without paperwork and mandatory payments. The only thing is that it will be impossible to work as a self-employed for your former boss: the tax office will notice this and fine.
Those who work under a civil contract. In this case, the customer deducts 13% of the tax, and if you become self-employed, he will be able to pay you 13% more.

To obtain this status, you need to download the My Tax application and submit an application to the tax office through it. You will need to enter your passport data and attach a personal photo. The individual entrepreneur will also need to submit an additional application to the tax office. After that, you can make mandatory payments directly in the application and generate receipts there.

Self-employed people cannot receive the main tax deduction, but they have their own: from each operation they pay 1–2% less tax until this interest accumulates 10,000 rubles. In fact, this means that they will pay 10,000 rubles less in tax per year.

This scheme is experimental: there is a risk that something will go wrong and it will be canceled. But while there is a chance, you can try and benefit from the situation.

4. Shop at duty-free

Domestically, all goods are subject to duties and VAT, so sellers mark up the goods on the goods. Physically, they pay the tax to the state, but in fact it falls on the buyer. Duty-free - duty-free zones at airports. By buying there, you pay less tax.

Most often, in duty-free they take alcohol, perfume, cosmetics, equipment and clothes. It is believed that there are no fakes, as the goods come directly from manufacturers.

There are several pitfalls:

You cannot get into duty-free without a plane ticket. That is, you can shop there only if you are flying abroad.
The price often turns out to be higher than the store price due to the expensive lease of a shopping space at the airport or some other reason. You will pay less taxes, but you can still overpay.

Therefore, before visiting duty-free, carefully study the prices for the desired goods. This can be done on sites such as MyDuteFree and RegStaer.