Investor caution due to taxes: Kept on long investments

Frequent and rapid changes in tax legislation in Russia force investors to be extremely cautious about investing in new projects and avoid long-term investments. Mikhail Orlov, partner and head of Kept’s tax and legal consulting department, spoke about this in an interview with Vedomosti.

According to him, business prefers areas where the forecasting period is very short in order to have time to get a return. “Few people today are ready to launch large projects: build factories, create complex logistics infrastructure. Because it is not clear what will happen after some time,” the expert explained.

To date, the situation has developed in such a way that there are much more requests for business restructuring in Russia and business abroad than for investments.

Orlov pointed out that in Russia there are almost no universal instruments left that ensure constant taxation. There are only certain regimes that provide stability, but they are all tied to investment. And if a business does not want to develop in the proposed industry, then it does not need such regimes.

In the second quarter, investments by Russian companies in fixed capital fell by 6.6 percent in annual terms, which is slightly better than in the first (minus 14.3 percent). For the half-year, the reduction was 9.9 percent, and for the whole of 2025 - 2.3 percent. The head of the Ministry of Economic Development, Maxim Reshetnikov, indicated that the government expects a resumption of investment growth in 2028. An updated macro forecast, which will present new figures, will appear in the second half of September.