Delovaya Rossiya, a business association operating across Russia, put forward a package of more than 50 economic policy changes for government consideration, according to a broadcast news outlet. A portion of them work against the interests of smaller enterprises.

Among the association's stated priorities are the removal of preferential tax arrangements for small businesses and sole traders, a prohibition on regional authorities adjusting rates independently, the abolition of the patent tax framework, and the introduction of levies on gifts and inherited assets.

Under a proposal put forward for 2027, the "income" calculation route available within both the standard USN framework and the AvtoUSN variant would be removed from the simplified tax arrangements. Under the USN scheme, the applicable levy on gross revenue stands at 6%, while the AvtoUSN arrangement carries a higher rate of 8%.

Addressing a broadcast news outlet, Yevgeniya Memruk — who leads the Union of Accountants and Tax Consultants — noted that businesses operating with annual turnover in the 10 million to 20 million ruble range and relatively lean cost structures tend to favour these arrangements. Whether these ventures ultimately succeed turns on what owners actually put into them — the depth of their knowledge and the extent of direct involvement.

Switching to alternative tax arrangements would stretch their taxable base to more than two and a half times its current size, she noted, a prospect that raises the possibility of many businesses becoming financially unworkable and shutting down.

A separate measure under consideration would bring a single revenue floor for value-added tax obligations into alignment across every special tax arrangement, AvtoUSN among them, with that change taking effect during the same period. Under the revised framework, any business whose annual turnover in the preceding calendar year topped 20 million rubles would become liable for VAT. Enterprises operating within the AvtoUSN framework are not required to collect VAT on revenues that fall below the 60-million-ruble ceiling.

Sberbank's data from earlier this year showed that the count of its individual entrepreneur and corporate clients enrolled in AvtoUSN grew to six times its previous level within a single month — a period that coincided with the eligibility ceiling for "regular" USN being reduced to 20 million rubles. According to Memruk, the proposal, as structured, would leave AvtoUSN unable to carry out its primary responsibilities.

Around 3.5 million self-employed business owners across Russia operate under the country's preferential flat-rate taxation scheme.

Beginning with the 2027 fiscal year, Delovaya Rossiya has put forward a plan to end the discretionary authority held by regional governments to set reduced USN tax rates. Under the "income" pathway, local administrations hold the power to lower the applicable rate anywhere from 6% down to a floor of 1%, while the "income minus expenses" pathway permits reductions from 15% to a minimum of 5%. Zones that attract outside money through favourable tax incentives face the possibility of losing that edge if policymakers withdraw those arrangements.

Scrapping the patent tax arrangement, known as PSN, is among the positions the association actively promotes. Proprietors operating under this arrangement remit a government-set levy tied to notional earnings rather than actual profits. As of 2026, the qualifying revenue ceiling for businesses seeking eligibility dropped to 20 million roubles, with projections placing that figure at 10 million by 2028.

Memruk told a broadcaster that scrapping the arrangement altogether would affect a wide swath of workers — those driving trucks, running independent retail operations, and providing personal or household services — while noting that uptake of the policy has already been declining among those it covers. PSN retains an active user base of roughly 1.5 million business owners spread across the nation. Removing the measure would cut into tax receipts flowing to regional governments.

Among the additional measures put forward are levying social insurance contributions on those whose income flows primarily from interest and dividends, alongside extending taxation to cover inherited assets and gifts. Under the proposed framework, equity holdings in listed companies would face no liability under either inheritance or gift tax provisions.

The group puts forward a defence of these contested measures — one echoed by those overseeing tax policy — centred on the claim that some business owners game preferential tax arrangements by, for instance, fragmenting their operations across multiple entities or registering as independent contractors to lower what they owe. Alexey Repik, who chairs the organisation, argued that firms misrepresenting their scale as smaller than it is distort the conditions under which businesses compete.

Repik, who built R-Pharm into a major pharmaceutical enterprise, has been described by some reports as a business figure with ties to the Putin family and an orientation toward state interests. Putin met with Repik at the Kremlin the day before Delovaya Rossiya put forward its proposals, according to reports.

Repik argued that paying steeper taxes now would spare entrepreneurs from even heavier burdens down the line, and described those in business not as opportunists chasing short-term gains but as people with a genuine stake in the country's future — a position offered alongside a separate observation from specialists that misuse of preferential tax arrangements does occur in practice.

Memruk told a broadcast outlet that Delovaya Rossiya's proposals take aim at the tax arrangements themselves — frameworks that the vast majority of small businesses across Russia rely on without any intent to circumvent them — rather than at individual rule-breakers.

Scheduled for presentation at Delovaya Rossiya's October 15 forum — an event Putin is also anticipated to attend — the reform package has additionally been forwarded to the relevant government bodies for their consideration. Those proposals had already been reviewed by the Finance Ministry. A spokesperson at the ministry told a broadcast outlet that the proposals still need more thorough examination, though Delovaya Rossiya has seen its earlier submissions enacted into legislation on more than one occasion.

Raising additional revenue stands as one path available to authorities looking to prevent the fiscal deficit from widening further. Fiscal targets set for the period running from 2027 through 2029 would hold the shortfall to 2.2 percent of gross domestic product — equivalent to 5.5 trillion roubles — in the first of those years, then taper to an average of 2 percent across the following two. By 2026, that figure had climbed to 7.3 trillion roubles, accounting for 3.2 per cent of GDP.

No precise total has been attached to Delovaya Rossiya's package of proposals, though the floor sits well into the tens of billions of rubles. Lawmakers from United Russia put the cost of halting further reductions to the VAT registration threshold at 51 billion rubles in 2027, rising to 100 billion rubles annually across 2028 and 2029.

Under the timeline in question, official publication of the legislation would need to occur before the close of November 2026 for the provisions to enter into force at the beginning of 2027 — a window that would give business owners roughly four weeks to adjust their tax arrangements.

Following the report's release, Delovaya Rossiya put out a statement in which Repik described the tax proposals as bearing only a loose connection to the organisation's agenda, and clarified that bringing experimental tax regimes to an early close was not among the measures being put forward. The leader of an established broadcaster's converged editorial operation chose to post the draft proposals openly on a social media platform.