MOSCOW, September 7. /TASS/. The final transition to the excess-profits tax in the oil industry is possible within 3-5 years, so far the budget is not ready for the burden, Director of the Tax & Customs Policy Department at the Russian Ministry of Finance Alexey Sazanov said on Friday.

"So far the budget in terms of expenditures structure is not ready to assume such income volatility (with a full-scale transition to excess-profits tax - TASS). In the long term, transition to excess-profits tax is inevitable, but this is not a conversation for the next three or even five years," Sazanov said.

With the expansion of the excess-profits tax practice, not only the effect on the industry is assessed, but also on the budget. "It is clear that taxation and financial result are the best practices, it would be correct to distribute them to the whole industry, but this cannot be done in isolation from how the budget feels transitioning to a new regime," he added.

According to him, the main goal of the department in regulating the oil industry is to balance the interests of business and the social function of the state.

Now, oil companies pay a mineral extraction tax on production volumes. The excess-profits tax would be taken from oil sales income, net of export duty, mineral extraction tax, production and transportation costs. The rate of excess-profits tax is 50%.

Excess-profits tax will become operational from January 1, 2019, at the pilot fields. The list of pilot projects includes 35 subsoil plots developed by Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, Surgutneftegaz and independent oil companies.