New windfall tax will enter Russian Tax Code specifically as tax on excess income, supplementing tax on excess profits - source

MOSCOW. Sept 25 (Interfax) - The windfall tax that the Finance Ministry proposes to collect from a number of mining companies as part of the fine-tuning of natural resource rent taxation will enter the Russian Tax Code as a separate new formulation - a "tax on excess income."

The Finance Ministry announced a number of planned tax innovations in a press release about submitting the budget package to the government on Thursday. Among them is the introduction of a tax for certain extracting organizations in the mining and metallurgical sector "of 30% of additional revenue received as a result of the growth in global prices for solid minerals in their ruble equivalent compared with the baseline for 2025 (and 20% for gold)," it said.

"For certain product types in the resource industries (precious metals, non-ferrous metals, fertilizers, and others), global prices underwent a rapid increase in 2026, allowing companies to receive additional rent income," the ministry said. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov later voiced this proposal at a government meeting, without clarifying the taxable base relative to the text of the press release.

"It is proposed to introduce a tax at a rate of 20% and 30%, depending on the type of activity, on additional income as a result of growth in world prices in ruble equivalent for solid minerals compared to the level of the base period, which is calculated from the period of 2025. This will increase the fairness of the distribution of income from natural resource rent between business and the state," Siluanov said.

Since 2023, the Tax Code has contained both the general concept of a "one-time tax" and a specific one - a "tax on excess profits." That year, it was first collected in the amount of around 300 billion rubles. Now, in those sections where the tax on excess profits is mentioned, a new term will be added after a comma - a "tax on excess income," a source familiar with the Finance Ministry's proposals told Interfax.

The source did not know how exactly the concept of excess income will be formulated, which will determine the precise contours of the taxable base.

If the base for the new windfall tax is specifically the increase in revenue rather than profit, for Norilsk Nickel the tax could amount to 72 billion rubles (11% of EBITDA), for Polyus it could be 33 billion rubles (5%), for Rusal it could be 23 billion rubles (12%), and for PhosAgro it could be 14 billion rubles (6%), according to calculations made by T-Investments analyst Akhmed Aliyev.