Skip to main content

Russia plans higher taxes on passive income and foreign online purchases as budget deficit continues

Source: Russia's Finance Ministry

Russia’s Finance Ministry has submitted a draft 2027 budget, along with spending plans for 2028 and 2029, to the government.

The budget also would tax passive income — including dividends, interest on deposits, proceeds from property sales, securities transactions, and other income — at rates ranging from 13% to 22%, up from the current 13-15%. The Finance Ministry justified raising the top rate as a “standardization of tax levels.”

“The proposed standardization will affect no more than 6% of the population that has taxable income, or about 4 million people,” the Finance Ministry said.

The tax rate will depend on the amount of income, not the method or source by which it was earned. Deposits up to 1 million rubles and the income of “participants in the SVO” will remain tax-exempt.

The draft budget also includes:

  • a 22% VAT rate on purchases made through cross-border e-commerce, with online marketplaces acting as tax agents responsible for paying it
  • a customs fee of 100 rubles per parcel for personal-use goods worth up to 200 euros sent from abroad by mail
  • indexing insurance pensions twice in 2027 — by 6.8% starting February 1 and by another 3.3% starting April 1. The average old-age pension is expected to reach 29,904 rubles by the end of 2027.

The budget will run a deficit in all three years, about 2% of GDP annually. “The draft budget was designed to be balanced. It will allow the government to fulfill all of its obligations and preserve macroeconomic stability under any possible changes,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said.

The Finance Ministry named “financing the country’s defense and security needs, and providing social support to SVO participants and their families” as the budget’s strategic priority.

The previous three-year budget, covering 2026 and the 2027-2028 planning period, also was drafted with a deficit. Among other things, it called for raising the base VAT rate by two percentage points, to 22%.

At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.

If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].

To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.