The authorities have developed measures to increase business transparency

The Ministry of Finance has prepared amendments to the draft law on tax authorities (Izvestia has it), which expands the powers of the Federal Tax Service. The service will assess the condition of Russian companies based on data from the "Service for the Assessment of Legal Entities". It allows a company to request a statement on its financial stability to confirm its reliability to customers.

"The bill creates a legal basis for the Federal Tax Service to assess the financial and economic status and activities of legal entities on the basis of data from the service," the Finance Ministry told Izvestia.

They also noted that it will be possible to transfer information to third parties only if it is fixed in the relevant regulations. All data is stored in the FTS systems, which provide reliable protection, concluded the Ministry of Finance.

The Federal Tax Service seeks to raise awareness of taxpayers in terms of risks, said Ruslan Kuleshov, general director of the law firm "Clean Environment", a member of the council of the IRO "Business Russia".

"It is not excluded that such information can be used by other government agencies that have access to information constituting a tax secret. In general, these changes will increase the transparency of activities in terms of compliance with the legislation on taxes and fees and will have a significant impact on the business climate," he believes.

We can expect that if the amendments are adopted, the Federal Tax Service will more actively insist on the use of the service by businesses, as well as use the results of assessments to substantiate claims to taxpayers, said Danil Sadovsky, a lawyer in the Tax Disputes practice of Lemchik, Krupsky & Partners.

For example, the Federal Tax Service may consider failure to use the service when concluding a contract as insufficient "commercial prudence", which may entail serious tax risks for the company, he said.

As follows from the explanatory documents to the amendments, from March 2023 to September 2024, the service was used by more than 63 thousand legal entities.

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Earlier, on November 1, it was reported that postal communication and courier services, employment and recruitment activities, as well as IT in the first nine months of 2024 became the areas with the maximum share of new businesses from the total number of small and medium-sized enterprises. This follows from the data of the SME Corporation.

Before that, on September 4, the Ministry of Economic Development announced an experiment in 2025 to introduce public evaluation of businesses, including restaurants, cafes and shopping centers. Financial analyst Mikhail Belyaev expressed the opinion that such a change would be useful.