Corporate tax burden rises slightly, while social security contributions rise sharply
The tax burden on the Russian economy amounted to 11.92% of revenue last year, according to the Federal Tax Service (FNS). This represented an increase of 0.3 percentage points compared to 2024, despite the tax reform that took effect in early 2025. The reform included an increase in the corporate income tax rate from 20% to 25%, a new progressive income tax, and higher excise and raw material taxes overall.
The data comes from the FNS’s latest annual report on the tax burden across 12 sectors of the Russian economy and approximately 40 individual industries. The agency publishes the data annually as a guide for businesses. According to the statement, if a company’s tax burden is significantly below the reported industry average, this increases the likelihood of audits by tax authorities.
In addition to the tax burden, the reports also include data on the level of social security contributions. In 2025, these amounted to 3.86% of revenue across the entire economy. This was the highest figure since at least 2017, when the FNS began including social security contributions in its statistics. In 2024, the figure was 3.43%.
Oil and Gas Lead in Tax Burden, Wholesale Trails
The economic sector with the highest tax burden in Russia is the raw materials industry, specifically the extraction of oil, gas, and coal. Its tax burden amounted to 51.75% in 2025. This was followed by real estate at 23.22% and the food industry at 17.95%. The sectors at the bottom of the tax burden ranking have generally carried a tax burden of between roughly 1% and 3% in recent years. These typically include tax-subsidized sectors such as aviation or state-regulated sectors such as gas supply. Other sectors, such as the chemical industry, pay hardly any taxes in many years because they can write off investments. Another reason for a low tax burden is the input tax credit on exports, from which the wood processing industry, for example, benefits. In 2025, wholesale trade excluding vehicles had the lowest tax burden at 2.56%. It was already at the bottom of the list in 2024 with 2.59%. For such particularly high-revenue economic sectors, the FNS statistics show low values because they compare taxes paid to revenue rather than to profits.
In 2025, the oil and gas industry thus had a tax burden 20.2 times higher than that of the sector with the lowest burden, wholesale trade. In 2024, the ratio was as high as 21.9. The gap has thus narrowed somewhat. By comparison: in 2021, the figure was 23.7. At that time, the tax burden for the oil and gas industry stood at 50.19%, while the lowest burden was borne by wholesale trade (excluding vehicles) at 2.12%, with a total economic burden of 10.38%.
In 2023, the tax burden was actually slightly higher at 11.96% than in 2025, a result partly due to one-time levies imposed at that time, such as the excess profits tax. The fact that the increase compared to 2024 amounted to only 0.3 percentage points last year is due to the 4.9-percentage-point decline in the tax burden for oil, gas, and coal production compared to 2024, when the rate was still 56.64%. The level of oil and gas taxes is based on the oil price, which was significantly lower in 2025 than in 2024.
Excluding raw materials: Tax burden rises by about 1 percentage point
Excluding the oil and gas sector, the tax burden on the remaining economic sectors rose by an average of just under 1.1 percentage points last year. The real estate sector was hit hardest, with its tax burden rising by 2.6 percentage points to 23.22%. Industry representatives attribute this development, among other things, to the fact that the assessed values for some properties were raised. The “Administrative and Additional Services” sector saw an increase of 2.2 percentage points to 16.86%. According to the underlying standard classification OKWED-2, this sector includes car rentals, human resources management, and tourism. These services had the fourth-highest tax burden, behind raw materials, real estate, and the food industry, which reached 17.95%, 0.6 percentage points higher than in 2024. Postal and courier services ranked fifth at 15.89% (+0.1). According to experts, aside from raw materials, sectors with transparent cash flows—such as real estate and services—are subject to particularly high taxation.
The tax burden on companies is likely to rise further this year, says independent tax consultant Alla Miljutina. Among the reasons she cites are the increase in the value-added tax at the beginning of the year from 20% to 22% and the elimination of reduced social security contributions for most sectors. She cites the increase in the minimum wage and a tightening of tax oversight through new enforcement powers for the Federal Tax Service (FNS) as additional factors. Some sectors, such as auto repair, the beauty industry, and retail, could therefore drift into the gray market, the expert predicts. However, in her assessment, this is likely to be only a temporary solution, as tax auditors have powerful automated monitoring tools at their disposal, the expert explains. This article was prepared for the German-Russian Chamber of Foreign Trade.
