{"id":255422,"date":"2026-01-21T03:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/255422\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T03:11:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T03:11:14","slug":"russian-businesses-hike-prices-in-response-to-vat-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/255422\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Businesses Hike Prices in Response to VAT Increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian businesses are hiking prices in response to new tax increases that took effect this month, the head of Russia\u2019s Chamber of Commerce and Industry told<\/a> the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Authorities raised the value-added tax (VAT) rate from 20% to 22% from\u00a0Jan. 1 and expanded the number of small businesses required to pay VAT in a bid to close a growing fiscal gap\u00a0created by soaring military expenditures and falling oil and gas revenues.<\/p>\n

Logistics companies have already raised rates by 10% to 20%,\u00a0Chamber of Commerce and Industry head Sergei Katyrin told Izvestia.<\/p>\n

Prices in food service, fitness, private healthcare and education rose by an average of 8% to 10%, while IT and digital services increased prices by 5% to 7%.<\/p>\n

Many companies had already built expected tax changes into their pricing in 2025 to avoid sharp increases at the start of the year, Katyrin added.<\/p>\n

Independent economist Andrei Barkhota estimated that between October and December businesses raised prices by an average of about 10% in anticipation of the reforms.<\/p>\n

Business representatives cited higher labor costs, rent, utilities, fuel, equipment maintenance and capital purchases as the main drivers of the price hikes.<\/p>\n

Many retailers are also facing inventory shortages after a surge in demand over the New Year’s holidays, which is adding further upward pressure on prices, retail entrepreneur Alexei Konoplev told Izvestia.<\/p>\n

According to the state statistics agency Rosstat, prices increased by an average of 1.26% between Jan. 1 and Jan. 12.<\/p>\n

The Central Bank expects<\/a> inflation to stand at 4% to 5% by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Businesses have\u00a0indicated<\/a>\u00a0in surveys that they planned to\u00a0pass<\/a>\u00a0the tax hike directly onto consumers, who have already been strained in recent years by surging inflation linked to war spending.<\/p>\n

Economists, including those at the Finance Ministry, have\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0they anticipate a modest rise in inflation as the VAT hike takes effect.<\/p>\n

VAT is one of the government\u2019s most important revenue sources,\u00a0generating<\/a>\u00a011.5 trillion rubles ($148 billion) from January through October 2025, or more than 38% of total federal revenue.<\/p>\n

The Finance Ministry expects the tax changes to generate an additional 3.2 trillion rubles ($40.96 billion) in revenue, which authorities say will be directed toward defense and security spending.<\/p>\n

Read this article in Russian at The Moscow Times’ Russian service.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian businesses are hiking prices in response to new tax increases that took effect this month, the head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,5066],"class_list":["post-255422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}