In compliance with the current legislation, the tax system of Belarus includes national and local taxes as well as obligatory payments. National taxes and obligatory payments are in force in the entire territory of the country and are transferred to the Republic's budget or Republic's extra-budgetary funds. Local taxes are in force in the territory of only the respective territorial administrative division and are transferred to the respective local budget.

Objects of taxation include property, incomes (profits) from economic activities, operations from realisation of commodities, movement of commodities across the customs border, etc.

Features of taxation and collection of payments into the budget of the Republic of Belarus in 2000 are:

• Profits of artificial persons (including enterprises with foreign investments and foreign artificial persons), participants of a contract on joint activities who obtained revenues from such activities before their allocation shall be subject to the tax on profits at the rate of 25 per cent.
• Payment to the budget of the value-added tax shall be made not later than 60 days from the day of shipment of products or commodities.
• The tax on immovable property collected from the cost of fixed assets imported into the territory of Belarus according to leasing contracts and other contracts made with foreign artificial and natural persons stipulating involvement of the imported property into economic turnover shall be paid irrespective of the conditions of the contract by the person who uses the imported property.
• The tax on incomes of foreign artificial persons from sources in Belarus shall be collected when the payment is calculated.
• Foreign artificial persons importing into the territory of Belarus commodities for demonstration at exhibitions, sales exhibitions or fairs, if these commodities are sold, shall pay the tax on incomes of foreign artificial persons which do not conduct activities in Belarus through the permanent representation at the rate of 10 per cent of the customs cost of the commodity declared when the commodity is presented for customs clearance under the treatment that allows the involvement of the commodities into the civil turnover.