A 52-point tax package presented to Vladimir Putin would dismantle several of Russia’s simplest arrangements for small businesses while offering major companies new ways to cut their tax bills. The proposals are not law, but they set out a strikingly uneven bargain: more complexity and fewer discounts for smaller operators, targeted relief and protection for large investors.
Alexei Repik, chairman of the association Delovaya Rossiya, put the package to Putin at a meeting on 14 October 2026. Reports by RBC and a separate Telegram publication described the central proposals as a partial withdrawal of preferential tax regimes for small and medium-sized businesses and a higher fiscal burden for some entrepreneurs.
Repik’s association presents the changes as a response to unfair competition and the artificial splitting of businesses into smaller entities to qualify for lighter taxation. Whether the measures would target abusive arrangements or catch ordinary small firms as well will depend on the legislation that follows. For now, the package is a policy proposal rather than an approved reform.
The regimes facing the axe
The most consequential measures concern the simplified tax system, known as USN, and its automated version. In 2026, the simplified system can tax turnover at 6 per cent, while the automated system applies an 8 per cent rate. These arrangements are used in part because they reduce paperwork and make liabilities easier to forecast than the standard system.
Delovaya Rossiya proposes abolishing both. It also wants to cut the turnover threshold at which businesses using the automated system become liable for value-added tax from 60 million roubles to 20 million roubles. That would bring more firms into VAT administration and expose them to a different set of accounting and reporting obligations.
The proposal would remove another source of flexibility: the power of regional governments to set lower USN rates. At present, regions can reduce the rate to 1 per cent for the “income” option and to 5 per cent for “income minus expenses”. Ending that discretion would create a more uniform national framework, but it would also deprive regional authorities of a tool for supporting particular sectors or local businesses.
Microbusinesses would face a separate blow if the patent-based tax system were abolished. Under that regime, an entrepreneur pays a fixed amount calculated by the state, rather than a sum directly linked to actual income. The annual turnover limit for using the system was already reduced to 20 million roubles in 2026.
For the smallest operators, the importance of these schemes is not limited to the headline rate. They reduce the need for specialist accounting and make the cost of operating legally more predictable. Removing them could therefore increase both the bill itself and the administrative effort required to remain compliant.
Relief at the other end of the market
The proposals take a markedly different approach to large business. Delovaya Rossiya wants an “investment tax certificate” that would allow a company to reduce its profit tax by up to 50 per cent of spending on fixed assets or research and development.
It also calls for wider benefits under the federal investment deduction. Another measure would permit restrictions on imports where a company has its own “innovative product”. The proposal does not define in the available material how eligibility would be assessed or how such restrictions would be enforced. If adopted, however, the mechanism could give qualifying Russian companies additional protection from foreign suppliers.
That contrast gives the package its political weight. Smaller companies would lose simple regimes and regional discounts, while large investors would gain new tools to reduce profit tax and potentially shield their products from competition. The association’s stated justification is the protection of fair competition, but the distribution of the proposed advantages and costs would itself become a central issue.
Delovaya Rossiya represents private, non-resource companies, a group that includes businesses of very different sizes. Its package therefore places a question of representation at the heart of the debate: whether a campaign against tax avoidance and artificial business-splitting can be designed narrowly enough not to burden firms that are small for entirely legitimate reasons.
Individuals would also enter the frame
The package extends beyond company taxation. The association proposes fixed social contributions for individuals who receive most of their income from interest and dividends.
It also wants an inheritance and gift tax where the tax base exceeds 50 million roubles. The rate would vary according to the degree of family relationship between the person transferring the assets and the recipient. Russia currently has no general inheritance tax, so the measure would create a new category of wealth taxation rather than adjust an existing charge.
The high threshold would restrict the number of people directly affected, but the principle would still represent a significant change. The proposal leaves important questions open, including how assets would be valued, what exemptions would apply and how the tax would be collected.
What the proposal could change
The presentation to Putin does not mean that any of the 52 measures has been adopted. Each major change would require further political decisions and, in many cases, amendments to tax law. Nor does the proposal by itself prove that small businesses would leave the legal economy or that state revenue would rise.
Those are possible outcomes. A firm facing higher taxes, earlier VAT obligations and the loss of a regional concession might raise prices, delay investment or reduce its activity. Some businesses could find the formal system less attractive, although the scale of any such shift would depend on demand, competition, enforcement and the final design of the rules.
The fiscal result is similarly uncertain. Removing preferential regimes could bring more businesses into the standard system and broaden the formal tax base. But if compliance costs rise sharply, some operators may close, shrink or seek less transparent ways of working. A wider tax net does not automatically produce higher receipts.
The immediate significance of Repik’s intervention is therefore not that Russia’s tax system has already changed. It is that a high-profile business association has placed a package before the president in which the burden of simplification would fall mainly on smaller firms, while investment incentives are directed towards larger ones. The next decision will determine whether that imbalance remains a proposal or becomes a feature of Russian tax policy.
