Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Thursday, October 29, 2026

With Russia's invasion of Ukraine straining on state finances, President Vladimir Putin is reaching for cash to fund his government and the war, squeezing tax revenue from an economy that's increasingly skewed toward the military -- while civilian needs take a back seat.

More

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

More from the article ...

... The country's 2027-2029 state budget, which was approved Thursday in the rubber-stamp parliament on the first of three votes, is accompanied by a string of tax hikes announced after the September parliamentary elections.

While last year the Kremlin went for a broad tax increase, raising value-added taxes at the cash register and making more small businesses pay VAT, this cash grab hits a narrower segment: mining companies and better-off citizens with investment income, property sales and bank accounts.

The budget deficit this year has swelled beyond forecast s due to lavish military spending and tepid economic growth amid sanctions, high interest rates for non-military companies, labor shortages and Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries and export terminals.

The deficit hit 5.8 trillion rubles ($72 billion) through August, almost 50% higher than last year's figure and above the already revised target of 4.8 trillion rubles, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.
New taxes will hit mining companies and bank interest

The government proposes a 20%-30% windfall profits tax on mining companies that have benefited from prices that have risen since last year. That will hit companies producing iron ore, nickel and gold. Another measure imposes higher rates of 13% to 22% on income from interest, dividends and proceeds from selling property. Such income is currently taxed at 13% for amounts under 2.4 million rubles ($29,800) and 15% above that. ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-10-29 02:26 PM | Reply

The following HTML tags are allowed in comments: a href, b, i, p, br, ul, ol, li and blockquote. Others will be stripped out. Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

Anyone can join this site and make comments. To post this comment, you must sign it with your Drudge Retort username. If you can't remember your username or password, use the lost password form to request it.
Username:
Password:

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy

Drudge Retort