On November 18th, 2014, Russian legislators finally passed the infamous anti-offshore law. It comes into force on January 1st, 2015.

In the final version of the law "On Introduction of Changes to the 1st and 2nd Articles of Tax Code of Russian Federation", a new to Russian legal system term was introduced: Controlled Foreign Company (CFC).

Effective from 2015, a CFC-controlling person is a Russian citizen who own more than 50% of company's share capital. Effective from 2016, this floor is lowered to 25%. It was suggested earlier that harder requirements would come into force one year later, in 2017, but the legislators reasoned that one year is enough to switch to the new reporting system.

With new legislation in force, all the controlling persons are obliged to report their share in the foreign company's share capital and to declare its undistributed profit. Obviously, for the cases when controlling persons do not rush to the tax office, the alternative mechanism of CFCs discovery will be developed. There may be various sources of information - for instance, banks where companies have corporate accounts, or servicing companies - administrators, auditors and lawyers that are associated with entities controlled by Russian citizens.

State Duma passed the Anti-offshore law