MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. Small and medium-sized enterprises contributed 7.7 trillion rubles ($83.5 bln) in taxes to Russia’s budget in January-October 2023, which is 24% more than in the same period of 2022, head of the Federal Tax Service, Daniil Yegorov said on Wednesday.

"The total volume of tax revenues from SMEs over ten months increased by 24% to 7.7 trillion rubles. Revenues from SMEs account for a fifth of all revenues into the budget system," Yegorov said at a joint meeting of the boards of Opora Rossii business association.

According to the head of the Federal Tax Service, in November, the number of small and medium-sized businesses amounted to more than 6.2 million, which is up 5.6% year-on-year.

In January-October 2023, the budget system received 1.6 trillion rubles ($17.3 bln) in insurance premiums from small and medium-sized businesses (29% more than in January - October 2022), 2.5 trillion rubles ($2.7 bln) in VAT (an increase of 30%), 1.3 trillion rubles ($14 bln) in personal income tax (an increase of 16%), 0.9 trillion rubles ($9.7 bln) in revenues from the use of special regimes (simplified taxation system, unified agricultural tax, patent, tax on professional income) (an increase of 14%).

In turn, the President of Opora Rossii, Alexander Kalinin, highly praised the work of the Federal Tax Service in increasing tax collection by automating business processes and scaling existing experiments. The introduction of zero VAT in the catering sector made it possible to increase tax revenues by 50%, the wage fund increased by 80%, and the number of employees and wages in this industry increased by 40%. Similar results are observed in the hotel sector.

"We see that the application of zero VAT in the field of catering and hotels gives positive results. Given the success of this experiment, we propose to extend its application to other areas, in particular, to the cleaning industry. We expect that the burden on the wage fund will decline," Kalinin said.