On 11 September the government published decree No. 1155, signed the same day. It changes eight points of the rules Russia uses to record the cost of its tax breaks and judge whether they pay for themselves. One of those points fixes the price used to measure oil and gas breaks: the base oil price written into the Budget Code — $59 a barrel this year, stepping down to $55 by 2030. Minfin's press centre has not mentioned the decree, and there is no explanatory note.

What the decree says

Point 20 of the rules governs the aggregate budget effect — the test of whether a break pays for itself. Its fourteenth paragraph is rewritten:

“For tax expenditures of the Russian Federation arising from breaks in the oil and gas sphere, the value of the aggregate budget effect (self-sufficiency) is additionally determined on the basis of a calculation of the indicators Nij, Boj and gi at base oil prices, calculated in accordance with paragraph 4 of article 96⁶ of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation.”

The word doing the work is additionally. This is a second calculation placed beside the first, not a replacement for it. The fifteenth and sixteenth paragraphs of the same point are repealed; the decree does not print what they said.

The price the test is anchored to

Paragraph 4 of article 96⁶ of the Budget Code, in the wording given it by federal law No. 432-FZ of 28 November 2025, sets the base oil price as an average annual price: $59 a barrel in 2026, $58 in 2027, $57 in 2028, $56 in 2029 and $55 in 2030, indexed by 2% a year from 2031. The base export price for natural gas is $250 per thousand cubic metres on the same indexation.

This is the price the budget rule calls the cut-off price. On 10 September Minfin's own Telegram channel carried an Interfax report that the finance minister, Anton Siluanov, called lowering it to $50 a barrel the base option — the level, in the channel's summary, at which price volatility would have the least effect on the budget balance. $50 is below every step of the path the law currently sets, including the $55 floor it does not reach until 2030.

What follows a bad score

The second paragraph of point 23 is also rewritten, and it sets out what follows from the test:

“Passports of tax expenditures of the Russian Federation, the results of the assessment of the effectiveness of tax expenditures of the Russian Federation, recommendations based on the results of the said assessment, including recommendations to Minfin on the need to retain (adjust, cancel) the breaks granted to payers, are sent by the curators of tax expenditures to Minfin, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the responsible executors of state programmes of the Russian Federation annually, by 30 December, and are also posted on the official websites of the curators of tax expenditures on the Internet (with the exception of information to which access is restricted by federal laws, and official information of limited distribution) no later than 5 working days from the date of their dispatch.”

A break that scores badly is not cancelled by the score. It becomes the subject of a recommendation to Minfin about keeping, adjusting or cancelling it.

The four changes to the measuring itself

The revised-data stage disappears. In point 5¹ the words “1 December (refined data — by 15 February)” are replaced by “15 December”. The decree prints both versions, so this change is unambiguous: the later deadline for corrected figures is gone.

The demand test loses its larger denominator. In point 13 the words “or the total number of payers” are struck out. Use of a break can now be measured only against the number of payers with a potential right to it — a category this same decree defines for the first time, as those who “are entitled to use the break (meet the conditions necessary for obtaining the break)”. A smaller denominator makes the same break look more widely used.

Thresholds can differ. A new paragraph in point 13¹ lets the curator of a tax expenditure set differentiated threshold values for that demand ratio during the first 5 years of a break's life.

A new point 16¹ covers breaks for residents of priority development territories, the free port of Vladivostok, the Arctic zone, special economic zones, the zone in Kaliningrad region, participants in the Magadan zone and the Kuril districts of Sakhalin, participants in the free economic zone in Crimea and Sevastopol, and regional investment projects. Their effectiveness is to be assessed through the “Tax Break Effectiveness” software of the tax service's “Nalog-3” system. A break's contribution is defined as the difference between beneficiaries' total capital investment and the capital investment there would have been without it; the latter is derived from a comparative profitability coefficient for the matching industry code. Minfin is to supply both figures to curators annually by 15 October.

Why the grading of tax breaks is a budget question

A tax break is revenue the budget chooses not to collect. Oil and gas is the one category this decree singles out for a second calculation of its own, anchored to a price fixed in law. This decree names no break and no amount, but it sets the yardstick. It arrives as the government writes the budget projections for 2027–2029, which Minfin has said will reach the Duma before the end of September.

It touches the weakest side of the budget we measure. Oil & gas budget revenues scores 14 out of 100 — rolling twelve-month real revenue at 56.9% of the 2021 total, through July. Minfin's own preliminary figures for January–August 2026, published on its channel, put federal revenue at 25,929 bn roubles, of which oil and gas supplied 5,019 bn: 19.4% of the total. Spending over the same eight months was 31,724 bn, a gap of 5,795 bn that Minfin's channel reported as 5.79 trn roubles, or 2.5% of GDP.

The same week, the central bank told the government what a bigger deficit costs.

What this changes in our model

Nothing. How Russia grades its tax breaks is not one of our eight components, and no rule change enters the index.

Oil and gas revenue remains the second-weakest of the eight at 14 out of 100; only overdue receivables, at 9, is worse. The strength index stands at 46.8 out of 100, in the stress zone. The one indicator that moved in today's data update was annual inflation, from 6.0% to 6.3% year on year, taking its score from 96 to 95.

What we do not know

We do not have the previous text. The decree prints the new wording of point 20's fourteenth paragraph but not the old one, and repeals the fifteenth and sixteenth without printing them. We could not obtain a consolidated prior redaction of decree No. 439. So we cannot say what the oil and gas calculation was anchored to before 11 September, and we make no claim that the anchor is new. The same gap applies to point 23: its second paragraph was restated and its third repealed, so we cannot say whether the exception for “official information of limited distribution” narrows what was published before or restates it.

The formula is not in the document. The self-sufficiency calculation runs on indicators the rules call Nij, Boj and gi. None of them is defined in the published text. What a lower base price does to any particular break therefore cannot be computed from this decree, and we do not assert a direction.

$50 is a statement, not a norm. The Budget Code still says $59 for 2026. The minister's remark reaches us at two removes — Minfin's channel quoting a news agency — and the press centre itself has published nothing on it.

No effective date is set out in a separate clause, and there is no explanatory note: the project cards on regulation.gov.ru did not answer.