In this decree the Plenary Session has set out, in particular, the following opinions on controversial VAT issues:

- public law organisations may be regarded as VAT-payers with respect to those financial and economic operations, in which they pursue their own interest as autonomous entities (para 1);

- unlike the Civil Code, the Tax Code proceeds from a broader concept of “services”, including the lease, transfer and granting of patents, licenses, trade marks, copyright  and some other civil law obligations (para 9);

- the loss of property for causes independent from the taxpayer (theft, natural disasters etc) should not be considered as a taxable operation, but the taxpayer should document the fact of loss and its being lost exactly for such causes; otherwise he must pay the tax in accordance with the rules envisaged for cases of gratuitous transfer of property (para 10);

- the dissemination of advertising materials, if it serves to the advancement of taxpayer’s goods and services in the respective market with the purpose to increase sales, is not VAT taxable, as long as such advertising materials do not have the features of a commodity, that is, a property designed for realization in its own capacity; as for the transfer of goods and rendition of services for advertising purposes, they are subject to taxation whenever the expenses for acquisition or creation of a unit of such goods or services exceed 100 RUR (para 12);

- if a contract does not explicitly provide that the price indicated in it does not include VAT, courts must proceed from the assumption that the amount of VAT is included in the price, and not to be added to it; in such a case the VAT is to be carved by the seller out of the contractual price by way of appropriate calculation method (para 17);

- if a lessee makes capital investments in the leased property and such investments constitute a form of lease payments, as agreed in the lease contract, he may offset the corresponding amounts of input VAT in the same way as the amount of lease payments proper; if capital investments  are made by lessee beside the lease payment, he may offset the corresponding input VAT  in ordinary procedure, because he must then be considered as a person who acquires goods, works or services for the purposes of his economic activity; in the event that such capital investments are compensated to him by the lessor, the respective inseparable improvements of the leased property  must be regarded as being transferred to  the lessor as a person who has paid for them, and the amounts of the input VAT, which have been earlier offset  by the lessee, shall be commuted into latter’s output VAT, whereas the lessor may either offset these amounts as his own input VAT or deduct them as expenses when paying profit tax (para 26).