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- Similar situation: the number of tax evasion cases has increased in Russia to a record
Similar situation: the number of tax evasion cases has increased in Russia to a record
In Russia, more than 3.3 thousand tax crimes were detected in the first half of the year, according to the Interior Ministry. After the change in the fiscal burden, the authorities accelerated the whitewashing of the economy and the fight against schemes to avoid mandatory payments. The number of such crimes jumped by almost 20% compared to last year, the highest increase in at least 12 years. The government is strengthening control over the concealment of income, salaries in envelopes and other gray schemes. What else is behind the growing number of tax crimes is in the Izvestia article.
How many tax crimes were detected in 2026
In January – June 2026, law enforcement officers identified 3,362 crimes related to tax evasion. This follows from the report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs "The state of crime in Russia", which the agency publishes monthly (Izvestia analyzed it). Compared to last year, the indicator increased by 17.2%, which is a record increase for at least the last 12 years. The editorial board sent a request to the Interior Ministry.
In June, the head of the department, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, reported that since the beginning of the year, 70 billion rubles had been recovered in cases of tax evasion. A significant part of this amount was made up of the seized property of the defendants.
The increase in the number of detected tax crimes in itself does not mean only that violations have become more frequent, said Anna Polyakova, an economist and head of the Moscow branch of the independent trade union Novy Trud. Statistics show, first of all, how many such cases law enforcement agencies have managed to detect, prove and qualify as crimes. Such violations become visible after tax analysis, data comparison, banking information, and inspections.
In recent years, the Federal Tax Service has changed its approach to control: the number of on-site inspections has decreased, and the main work has increasingly become based on analytics, explained Daniil Gonenko, associate professor at the Department of Economics and Finance of the Public Sector at the Presidential Academy.
He added: using digital tools, the service identifies risks and invites businesses to voluntarily clarify their tax obligations. This approach allows us to focus inspections on companies with the most significant risks.
In addition, Daniil Gonenko continued, the number of detected violations was also affected by changes in the tax legislation of 2025-2026. Since January 1 last year, a progressive personal income tax scale has been introduced in Russia — from 13 to 22%, depending on the amount of income. And the basic income tax rate has increased to 25%. In addition, starting in 2026, the basic VAT was increased to 22%, and the income level for exemption from this tax for organizations and sole proprietors on the Unified tax System decreased from 60 million to 20 million rubles.
The growing tax burden has prompted some citizens and companies to look for ways to reduce costs and circumvent the requirements. However, against this background, the authorities have strengthened control over compliance with mandatory payments and the fight against shadow schemes. Now tax administration covers more and more operations, and the Federal Tax Service has a lot of data to compare, Daniil Gonenko explained.
The editorial board contacted the tax service for a comment on what the agency attributes to such an increase in the detection of violations.
How criminals evade taxes
In practice, they are now identifying not only primitive schemes such as non-declaration, but also more complex structures, Anna Polyakova noted. Among them are business fragmentation in order to maintain a special regime or avoid paying VAT, artificial distribution of revenue between several individual entrepreneurs (sole proprietors) and companies, fictitious document management with technical contractors.
Another risk area is the registration of employees as self—employed or performers under civil law contracts, the expert recalled. For businesses, this model allows them not to pay insurance premiums and not to incur part of the costs and obligations related to labor relations.
— If a person really works independently, it is legal. But when he is actually a full—time employee — he follows a set schedule, works under the control of the company, constantly performs one function and depends on one customer - then this is actually a substitution of relationships. In this case, the company faces not only tax but also labor risks," explained Anna Polyakova.
According to her, unscrupulous employers also pay salaries in envelopes.
Most often, tax crimes are recorded in the construction sector, trade, including wholesale, in the financial and credit system, and in the transport industry, said financial adviser and founder Rodin.Capital Alexey Rodin.
One of the high—profile cases of this year is the "paper" VAT scheme, which was revealed on March 15. According to the intelligence services, due to fraud, the Russian budget did not receive more than 1.2 trillion rubles in taxes. The attackers managed to organize over 4.8 thousand transit organizations to cash out money and withdraw it into the shadow market.
The services were used by more than 37 thousand enterprises of the real sector of the economy. Among them are companies from the construction, fuel and textile industries. Clients received invoices, invoices, and certificates of completed work from formal counterparties, although there were no goods, services, or actual payments for them.
According to the investigation, hundreds of people participated in the scheme. To date, more than 20 people are involved in the case. On July 23, it was reported about the detention of Alexander Osin in Minsk, whom law enforcement authorities consider to be one of the organizers of the scheme.
At the beginning of the year, another smaller case was actively discussed. In February, it became known that Andrey Prytykin, the head of the Russian Appetite street food chain and ex-deputy of the Voronezh Regional Duma, was suspected of non-payment of 700 million rubles in taxes. According to investigators, the businessman used a business fragmentation scheme: employees of his enterprises and relatives were formally registered as sole proprietors, which made it possible to apply special tax regimes and reduce liabilities.
How will the strengthening of tax control affect citizens and businesses
Enhanced digital control will force companies to either switch to the legal field or look for more sophisticated ways to conceal their activities, said Alexander Khaminsky, a lawyer and head of the Law Enforcement Center in Moscow and the Moscow Region.
"For some small and medium—sized businesses, this may mean going into the shadows — switching to cash payments, hiding employment and reducing official turnover," warned Alexey Moshkin, General Director of the Tax Assistance Center.
According to a survey by Opora Russia published at the end of March, about 42% of entrepreneurs recorded an increase in the shadow sector in their industries. The trend is developing most actively in the field of car inspection and repair, as stated by almost 70% of respondents. In the beauty industry, 66% of respondents noted going into the shadows, in the hotel business - 59%.
At the same time, large companies and some medium-sized businesses are in a different situation. As a rule, they have more financial reserves, allowing them to adapt to the growth of tax payments and abandon gray schemes, Alexey Moshkin explained. And the risks of criminal prosecution and reputational losses against the background of the development of digital control of the Federal Tax Service and the work of law enforcement agencies may be too high for them, he added.
So, if tax control is spot-on, predictable and aimed at real schemes, it encourages businesses to work legally: the risks of additional charges, fines and criminal proceedings become higher than the benefits of tax evasion, explained Anna Polyakova from the independent trade union Novy Trud.
Therefore, the task is to make it inevitable that deliberate schemes will be discovered, and to give a bona fide business a clear and predictable way to correct violations.
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