Companies' tax burden increases slightly, social security contributions rise sharply

The tax burden on the Russian economy amounted to 11.92% of turnover last year, reports the tax authority FNS. Compared to 2024, this represents an increase of 0.3 percentage points, despite the tax reform that came into force at the beginning of 2025. It included an increase in corporate income tax from 20% to 25%, a new progressive income tax and higher excise duties and commodity taxes overall. The data comes from the latest FNS annual report on the tax burden in 12 sectors of the Russian economy and around 40 individual industries. The authority publishes the data every year as a guide for companies. If a company's own tax burden is significantly lower than the stated industry average, this increases the likelihood of inspections by the tax authorities, according to the statement.In addition to the tax burden, the reports also contain information on the level of social security contributions. In 2025, they amounted to 3.86% of turnover across the entire economy. This was the highest figure since at least 2017, when FNS included social security contributions in its statistics. In 2024 it was 3.43%. Oil and gas at the top of the tax league, wholesale at the bottom The economic sector with the highest tax burden in Russia is the raw materials industry, especially the extraction of oil, gas and coal. Its tax burden amounted to 51.75% in 2025. It was followed by real estate with 23.22% and the food industry with 17.95%. In recent years, the sectors at the lower end of the tax burden rankings usually had a tax burden of between around 1% and 3%. These are generally tax-subsidized industries such as aviation or state-regulated sectors such as gas supply. Other sectors, such as chemicals, hardly pay any taxes in many years because they can write off investments. Another reason for a low tax burden is the input tax deduction for exports, which benefits wood processing, for example. In 2025, wholesale trade excluding vehicles had the lowest tax burden at 2.56%. It was already at the bottom in 2024 with 2.59%. The FNS statistics show low values for such particularly high-turnover economic sectors because they compare the taxes paid with turnover and not with profits, meaning that the oil and gas industry had a 20.2 times higher tax burden in 2025 than the bottom performer, wholesaling. In 2024, the factor was even 21.9, meaning that the gap has closed somewhat. By way of comparison, the figure for 2021 was 23.7. At that time, the tax burden for the oil and gas sector was 50.19%, while the lowest burden was borne by wholesale trade excluding vehicles at 2.12%, with a total burden on the economy of 10.38%. In 2023, the tax burden was even slightly higher than in 2025 at 11.96%, with one-off levies such as the excess profits tax contributing to this. The fact that the increase compared to 2024 was only 0.3 percentage points last year is due to the 4.9 percentage point decrease 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 increases by around 1 percentage point Excluding the oil and gas sector, the tax burden of the other economic sectors rose by an average of just under 1.1 percentage points last year. The real estate sector was the hardest hit, with its tax burden rising by 2.6 percentage points to 23.22%. Industry representatives explain the development in part by the fact that the cadastral values for some properties were raised. The "Administrative and additional services" sector recorded an increase of 2.2 percentage points to 16.86%. According to the underlying OKWED-2 standard classification, this includes car rental, personnel management and tourism. These services had the fourth-highest tax burden, behind commodities, real estate and the food industry, which came in at 17.95%, 0.6 percentage points higher than in 2024. In fifth place were postal and courier services at 15.89% (+0.1). According to experts, in addition to commodities, it is mainly economic sectors with transparent cash flows that are subject to high taxes, such as real estate and services, and the tax burden on companies is likely to increase further this year, says independent tax consultant Alla Miljutina. She cites the increase in VAT from 20% to 22% at the beginning of the year and the abolition of reduced social security contributions for most sectors as reasons for this. She also cites the increase in the minimum wage and the tightening of tax supervision through new control powers for the FNS tax authority. The expert predicts that some sectors such as car services, the beauty industry and retail could therefore move into the gray zone. However, she believes that this is only likely to be a temporary solution, as the tax inspectors have powerful automatic control instruments at their disposal, explains the expert. This article was written for the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce Abroad. The post Corporate tax burden increases slightly, social security contributions rise sharply appeared first on ostwirtschaft.de.