Russia is one of those few places on the planet that implemented a flat-tax system, a darling idea of the American neo-conservative movement in the 1980s that never really did pass the smell test (forgive me for getting a little political). But, by one of the accidents of nature, several U.S. conservative economic advisors got the ear of the people managing and mismanaging the Russian economy in the 1990s and convinced them to establish a flat tax there. This was before Putin was in charge.
As the Russian economy grew through the booming oil and gas industries, Russian tax revenues from those sources boomed, to the point where over half of the government income came from the revenues from the oil and gas industry. Therefore, they were able to maintain their 13% flax tax system throughout Putin’s regime. This was odd, but it has been the case there for around three decades. It was one of the 26 countries/entities (including Transnistria and South Ossetia) on the planet able to live with a flat tax (which includes Ukraine (19.5%) and four NATO countries: Bulgaria (10%), Romania (10%), Hungary (15%) and Estonia (20%)).
This is no longer the case. In 2021 they imposed a slightly higher tax rate of 15% on those making more than 5 million rubles a year. (1 dollar = 89 rubles, $56K a year). They kept the flat tax rate at 13% for the rest. This was before there was a war in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine did mess up the Russian government budget, as they were collecting less money from the oil industry because of sanctions and sometimes lower oil prices, while their own expenditures grew. This has finally caused the system to crack, resulting in them raising taxes. See: Russia Is Preparing New Tax Hikes. Here’s Why. – The Moscow Times
This well done article provides for the following tax rates:
- less the 2.4 million a year – taxes at 13%
- 2.4 million to 5 million rubles — taxed at 15%
- 5 million to 20 million rubles — taxed at 18%
- 20 million to 50 million rubles — taxed at 20%
- 50 million rubles or higher — taxed at 22%
The average annual income in Russia is around 900,000 rubles a year ($9,960). 50 million rubles is an annual income of around 562,000 dollars. This is still considerably lower than U.S. tax rates.
Most Russians are not affected by this tax increase. They expect around 2 million people, or about 3% of their population, will be affected by this tax increase. The majority of those higher income earners live in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the majority of the people in those two central cities do not support Putin. So, political impact has been (deliberately) minimized.
The Russian corporate tax rate is rising from 20% to 25%. The current U.S. corporate tax rate is 21%.
Anyhow, it is worth reading the entire article.
I may be wrong but I think the dates you have used around the implementation of the flat tax are inaccurate. The flat tax was Putin’s policy passed in 2000 while he was president and mainly designed not for neoconservative ideological reasons, but instead because a progressive income tax was deemed unenforceable due to how easy it was for Russian oligarchs to transfer their true income around and avoid higher tax brackets. Further, it replaced such an inefficient system of ad hoc taxes that it was certainly an improvement from both the tax payer and government perspective.