Tax Disputes in 2024-2025: What Arbitrazh Court Statistics Reveal

Is It Possible to Win a Tax Dispute Against the FTS in 2025

Direct answer: in large corporate cases with additional charges exceeding RUB 50 million — practically no. According to the Judicial Department of the Russian Supreme Court, 84.6% of tax disputes in arbitrazh courts in 2024 ended in favor of the tax authorities. Out of 6,152 cases reviewed for a total amount of RUB 283 billion, approximately 34% were resolved in favor of taxpayers — but in monetary terms, this is less than 5% of the claimed amounts.

This article provides a professional analysis of court practice in tax disputes for the period of 1998-2025, with direct links to primary sources. The organizing thesis is: judicial defense in tax disputes currently operates under a different logic than formally declared. And the profession needs to abandon its illusions as quickly as possible regarding the notion that this function remains unchanged.

Chronology of Judicial Defense Degradation in Tax Disputes: 1998-2025

To understand the current state of the institution, one must look at a condensed chronology of the last 25 years. The complete visual chronology is in the timeline above.

1998. Tax police as an independent body. The Federal Tax Police Service (FSNP), created in 1992 by Decree No. 262, by the late 1990s represented a law enforcement agency of about 56,000 personnel, conducting audits of large corporations — Sidanco, Lukoil, Gazprom. The agency had its own authority to investigate tax crimes and was not subordinate to the tax service.

2003. Dissolution of the FSNP. By Presidential Decree No. 306 of March 11, 2003, the Federal Tax Police Service was abolished effective July 1, 2003. Most functions and a staff of 16,000 were transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, while the material base and 40,000 staff units went to the newly created State Drug Control Service. The independent controller over the tax system ceased to exist.

2013-2014. Liquidation of the Russian Supreme Arbitrazh Court. A turning point in the judicial defense of business. Following the Law on Amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation No. 2-FKZ of February 5, 2014, the Supreme Arbitrazh Court ceased operations on August 6, 2014. The Supreme Arbitrazh Court was an institution with an established doctrine of entrepreneur defense, setting precedents in favor of taxpayers. After 2014, its powers were transferred to the Supreme Court, and the active development of the defense doctrine ceased.

2017. Complete pivot toward the budget. A stable judicial position was formed: in case of doubt in tax disputes, the court sides with the budget. Subsidiary liability of controlling persons in bankruptcy was strengthened.

2019-2024. The Constitutional Court and Supreme Court as image-making institutions. Once or twice a year, decisions are made in favor of the taxpayer in high-profile cases, creating the illusion of a functioning defense system. Mass practice shows the opposite.

Tax Dispute Statistics for 2020-2024: Real Figures

How Many Tax Disputes Are Considered by Arbitrazh Courts

According to the Judicial Department of the Russian Supreme Court, the dynamics of the number of tax disputes in arbitrazh courts of the first instance are:

• 2020: 6,781 cases
• 2021: 6,730 cases
• 2022: 6,262 cases
• 2024: 6,152 cases totaling RUB 283 billion; the total number of business tax litigations decreased by 33.6%, to 10.9 thousand.

What Percentage of Tax Disputes Does the Taxpayer Win

Here lies a key methodological gap.

In quantitative terms, statistics show 34-37% of decisions in favor of the taxpayer. In monetary terms — what share of the claimed additional charges is actually canceled by the court — the picture is radically different:

• 2020: 10.18% (RUB 166 mln of satisfied claims out of RUB 1,631 mln claimed)
• 2021: 8.95% (RUB 263 mln out of RUB 2,946 mln)
• 2022: 4.79% (RUB 125 mln out of RUB 2,619 mln)

In two years, the share of actually challenged additional charges in monetary terms fell by more than half — from 10% to less than 5%.

The Statistics Paradox: Why Quantity and Amount Diverge

Simple arithmetic on the 2022 data explains the gap.

RUB 125 million of satisfied claims, divided by 2,303 "won" cases, yields an average of RUB 54,000 per case.

Meanwhile, the average amount of additional charges per effective field tax audit of companies in 2024, according to the FTS (reporting form No. 2-NK), is:

• RUB 65 mln on average in Russia
• RUB 101 mln in Moscow
• RUB 130 mln in St. Petersburg

The gap between the average win (RUB 54,000) and the average additional charge (RUB 65-130 mln) is a thousandfold. This means that the "won" cases in the statistics mathematically belong to a different category — these are not corporate victories, but minor technical cancellations.

The specialized analytics of Russian Tax & Customs draws a direct conclusion: "Positive decisions on average account for challenging tax authority decisions with low amounts of additional charges, as well as challenging non-normative legal acts where additional charges are absent."

What Happened in 2024: Tax Dispute as a Formality

A qualitative shift occurred in 2024. Arbitrazh lawyers document it openly.

• A total of 2.06 million applications were submitted to arbitrazh courts; decisions were issued in 1.82 million cases
• Business tax litigations — 10.9 thousand (a 33.6% decrease compared to 2023)
• 6,152 tax disputes totaling RUB 283 billion were considered in the first instance
• 84.6% of cases were resolved in favor of the tax authorities
• The amount of funds recovered by arbitrazh courts in favor of state budgets increased 225 times — to RUB 3.72 trillion

"A unique phenomenon" — this is a professional diagnosis of the profession itself.

Tax Disputes by Category: VAT, Corporate Income Tax, Business Splitting

Business Splitting: Victory Statistics in 2024-2025

In 2024, arbitrazh courts of the cassation instance considered 124 disputes on business splitting. In 22% of cases, decisions were made in favor of taxpayers. This statistic has remained unchanged for the last 5 years.

But this is in the cassation instance, after passing the first and appellate instances. Most cases lost in the first instance are simply not appealed further — clients understand the prospects.

According to unofficial estimates circulating in the professional community, the share of successful outcomes for businesses in tax disputes over business splitting fell to 2.5% in 2025.

VAT and Corporate Income Tax: Shift to the Pre-Trial Stage

Since 2020, the total amount of budget revenues voluntarily paid by taxpayers following pre-audit analysis has exceeded the total amount of additional charges resulting from control measures.

This means that the main amounts are recovered prior to court, through pre-audit pressure. Arbitrazh courts primarily receive cases where the company decided to fight — and there it almost always loses.

In 2025, the number of field tax audits increased: by 15-20% across Russia, and by 45-50% in Moscow compared to the same period in 2024. The effectiveness of field audits of organizations in the Russian Federation and Moscow reached 98%.

Tax Disputes Involving Individuals

Here the statistics are better for the taxpayer — but this is explained by the very structure of the cases: small amounts, technical violations, procedural errors by tax authorities. According to scientific data from the analysis of specific territorial inspectorates, the ratio by amounts in favor of the tax authority is: for legal entities — 92%, for entrepreneurs — 75%, for individuals — 100%.

This means that for corporate cases, the chances are practically zero in monetary terms. The "100% for individuals" paradox means that individuals always lose; the statistics "in favor of taxpayers" are mainly formed when the FTS itself files a collection lawsuit against an individual but receives only partial satisfaction.

Advokatskaya Gazeta and Reviews: Where Are the 2,300 Taxpayer Victories

Any practicing attorney can verify a simple fact.

If the 2,303 decisions in favor of taxpayers annually reflected real victories on the merits, the professional community would receive a daily stream of analyses of these victories. Advokatskaya Gazeta, Pravo.ru, Zakon.ru, Nalogoved, specialized teams at Pepeliaev, Lemchik-Krupskiy, ALUMNI Partners, VEGAS LEX — they all work on the material of significant won cases.

In reality, 5-15 analyses of truly significant taxpayer victories are published per year. Not 2,300, but 5-15. This aligns with the share of satisfied claims by amount (about 5%), but not with the quantitative share (37%).

Why Judicial Defense in Tax Disputes Fails: A Structural Analysis

In a functioning legal system, there must be an organization capable of controlling the work of regulatory bodies. Someone must be independent of the tax service and simultaneously have sufficient authority to correct its decisions.

From 1991 to 2003, this function was partially performed by the tax police as an independent body. After 2003, the investigation of tax crimes moved under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and then to the Investigative Committee (IC). Control over the tax system became the function of agencies for which the tax service is a supplier of materials and a partner, rather than an object of independent control.

In the judicial system, the function of reviewing economic disputes was carried out by the Supreme Arbitrazh Court until 2014. After 2014, this function passed to the Supreme Court, which considers it as one of many. The Constitutional Court is not an institution that reviews specific economic disputes.

As a result, structurally, there is no body capable of controlling the work of the tax service and its procedural partners. This is not the result of a conspiracy. It is the result of consecutive institutional decisions in 2003 and 2014, each of which was justified by other goals.

The Ethical Problem of the Profession: The Attorney and Hallucination

If defense in the traditional sense does not work, what should an attorney tell a client who comes with a tax audit or an initiated tax case?

Here lies a fork in the road that defines professional integrity.

The first path is to continue promising a win. To take an advance, sign an agreement, prepare procedural documents, go through the instances, lose, and explain the loss by the "strict position of the court." To receive a fee for a process in which the result was predetermined before it began.

This is an attorney hallucination — the production of plausible procedural text disconnected from the reality of the outcome. In its functional structure, it is identical to the work of a neural network that generates convincing text unrelated to facts. The difference is in speed, not in nature.

The second path is to tell the client the truth. To explain that in areas of high state interest regarding tax cases, it is impossible to win. That promising a win is a deception. That there are other tasks that can be solved.

What Actually Works: Four Principles of Business Defense

Principle 1. Completely White Operations

Structuring the business so that a tax claim has no factual basis. No gray schemes. No aggressive optimization. Any gray area existing today will be classified as a violation in two or three years, and retroactive reassessment will be applied without the possibility of defense.

Principle 2. A Four-Year Forecast

Tax regulation is moving toward simplification for the state and automation of control. Every two or three years, new mechanisms appear — ASK NDS, Single Tax Account (ENS), expansion of grounds for subsidiary liability. An attorney with a one-year horizon lags behind the environment. The working horizon is four years.

Principle 3. Strategy of Exhausting the Creditor's Interest

If a problem has arisen and judicial challenge will not lead to a win, what remains is working with time. Delaying the process, consistently using procedural opportunities, withdrawing assets before the case is initiated, bankruptcy as a way to close the perimeter. The goal is not to win in court, but to bring the situation to a point where the creditor loses interest in pursuit.

Principle 4. One Hundred Percent Truth to the Client

If an attorney begins to hallucinate — promising the impossible, hiding the real prospects, reproducing their past victories as a universal template — they become worse than a neural network. Because a neural network transparently reports its nature. An attorney hiding the truth sells an illusion under the guise of professional action.

Practice Results: What is Realistically Achievable

In my practice over recent years, the following picture emerges:

None of the clients are in prison. No one has been held to subsidiary liability. But no one has won against the tax authority either.

This is the diagnosis of the era in a single line.

Imprisonment and subsidiary liability are the worst-case scenarios for a business owner in zones of tax conflict. Their absence means that preventive architecture and the strategy of managing the inevitable yield results.

The absence of wins against the tax authority means that classic defense through the judicial process, separate from strategy, does not work.

These two facts together show: results are achieved through prevention and strategy, not through defense in court. This is a post-attorney role. Not a defender in the classic sense — a navigator in reality.

What This Means for the Legal Profession in Zones of Degradation

The legal profession as an institution was formed in an era when judicial defense worked. When there was a gap between the norm and its application, requiring a professional interpreter. When the outcome of a case was determined by the quality of arguments.

This era has ended in zones of high state interest. Not everywhere — in civil disputes between private parties, defense continues to work. But in tax, budget, utility disputes with subscribers, and a number of other categories, the result has become predetermined by the environment.

The profession must redefine itself. An attorney in these zones is no longer a defender — they are a navigator. Not someone who promises a win — someone who sees reality and helps act within it. Not someone who works with the norm — someone who works with the architecture of the system.

Those colleagues who continue to work in the logic of classic defense in zones of degradation accelerate their own displacement. Their clients gradually realize that what is promised is unattainable. Trust in the profession falls. Imitation becomes more expensive than reality.

Those who redefine their role will remain necessary. The demand for navigation in conditions of non-functioning defense is higher than ever. This role is an almost empty niche in the modern legal market.

When Norms Contradict Practice

These areas are the most valuable for understanding. The formal norm says one thing, court practice says another. The defense strategy is built on this gap.

Conclusion: Abandoning Illusions as a Condition for the Profession's Work

The institution of judicial defense in tax disputes today operates under a different logic than formally declared. This is a statement of fact, not a criticism.

Acknowledging this fact is not a weakness of the profession nor a betrayal of its ethics. It is a return of the profession to reality. The legal profession is strong when it tells the truth — to itself and to its clients. When it promises only what it can deliver. When it does not confuse procedural action with actual results.

The current environment is structured such that defense in the traditional sense is impossible in a number of categories. This is not a reason to fall into nostalgia. It is a reason to abandon illusions as quickly as possible and integrate into the logic of the current time.

Those who do this will continue to work. Those who continue to imitate the old defense will find themselves in the position of a hallucinating system — producing plausible text with no connection to reality. And they will be displaced not by repressions, but by the very structure of the environment.

A detailed framework for the transformation of the profession and the emergence of new roles is in the manifesto "Algorithm of Complexity" on fishchuk.su. Technological developments are in the project of the Research Institute of System Synthesis at isslab.ru.

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