Russia's FNS Tests Scoring Model to Catch Self-Employed Tax Evasion

Russia's Federal Tax Service (FNS) is testing a scoring model designed to detect hidden income among the self-employed. The system targets users who unlawfully cancel receipts in the My Tax app after issuing them to customers for goods or services.

According to the reported figures, around 3,000 self-employed people have been held liable since the start of 2026. The fines they paid total about 300 million rubles.

What the model tracks

The tool is meant to identify payers of the professional income tax (NPD) who cancel receipts without grounds. It also takes into account cancellations made by partners of the self-employed, such as digital intermediary platforms and banks.

The penalty for concealing income is 20% of the transaction amount for a first offence and 100% for a repeat one.

Background of the problem

The issue of undeclared earnings has been raised before. Labor and Social Protection Minister Anton Kotyakov has said that declared incomes of NPD payers are a concern, noting that some earn less than the minimum wage. In 2025 the Accounts Chamber recommended that the government change the terms of the special tax regime so the FNS could monitor payments of the self-employed. An agency representative said at the time that some users were not submitting payment data and that the number of people cancelling income was growing.

Evgenia Memruk, head of the Union of Accountants and Tax Consultants, told Forbes that the national scale of concealment is hard to estimate from available data. In her view, payers can enter only part of their revenue, especially in cash transactions that leave no bank trace. She suggested systematic control involving banks and aggregators, and comparing official income with spending, particularly large purchases that exceed declared receipts.

The NPD regime has operated in Russia since 2018 as an experiment designed to run for ten years. Self-employed people pay 4% on income from individuals and 6% on income from companies, with an annual income cap of 2.4 million rubles.