Russia Wants to Spy on Your Foreign E-Wallets by June 1st or Else
Nothing says "everything is going according to plan" quite like a desperate government demand to audit your tiny digital wallets. FNS is politely asking everyone to hand over their foreign cash logs, because keeping track of actual money is hard these days.
The Federal Tax Service of Russia has issued a deadline for citizens and residents to report their 2025 transactions on foreign bank accounts and digital wallets.
Anyone residing in the country for more than 183 days, including foreigners and stateless individuals, must comply. It seems the digital dragnet is getting tighter, and even that forgotten Revolut or Pyypl account with three euros in it is now of national importance.
Reports can be submitted digitally through the online taxpayer portal, where the government has graciously pre-filled personal data. Users only need to enter their total turnover and final balances. Alternatively, lovers of retro bureaucracy can print out physical paper forms and hand-deliver them to a tax office.
There is a small loophole for accounts in countries of the Eurasian Economic Union or jurisdictions with automatic tax data exchange. However, this escape hatch only works if the total yearly transaction volume or final balance stays below 600,000 rubles.
Watching a massive state apparatus build a high-tech surveillance system just to scrape pennies from fleeing citizens' digital wallets is a spectacular comedy of desperation. The dream of digital decentralization is officially meeting the harsh reality of bureaucratic panic.
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