On 24 September Minfin submitted a budget package to the government: the draft federal budget for 2027 and the 2028–2029 planning period, a bill on special rules for executing the budget over those three years, and amendments to the Tax Code. Under article 192 of the Budget Code, the government must submit the draft budget to the State Duma by 1 October. The site minfin.gov.ru returns an error 503 from our environment, so we read the ministry’s official text in two legal databases that reproduce it: ConsultantPlus and the full version at Garant. One paragraph proposes changing the rule itself: from 2027, the base oil price would be $50 a barrel — $8 below the step in the current Budget Code for 2027, and $5 below the endpoint its schedule was due to reach only in 2030.
What Minfin’s text says
“The draft budget was prepared on the basis of the baseline scenario in the socio-economic development forecast. To minimise the negative impact of external factors and ensure that all commitments are met unconditionally, from 2027 the budget will provide for a base oil price of $50 per barrel.”
The same text puts the federal deficit at “around 2% of GDP annually” in all three years. For comparison, the current budget law, No. 426-FZ of 28 November 2025, which we read in its official publication, approves 2027 revenue of 42.9 trillion roubles, spending of 46.1 trillion and a deficit of 3,185.7 billion roubles — 1.2% of the GDP forecast in the same law, 255,498 billion roubles. The move from the 1.2% written ten months ago to “around 2%” is an upward revision to the deficit plan for the same year.
Rewriting the rule instead of following it
The base price is the line that splits oil and gas revenue in two: the budget may spend the revenue collected up to that line; Minfin converts anything above it into foreign currency and gold for the NWF; and when the actual price drops below the line, the shortfall is covered by selling the fund’s liquid assets. Our guide to oil and gas revenues explains the mechanism month by month.
The current path is fixed in point 4 of article 96⁶ of the Budget Code, as amended by law No. 432-FZ of 28 November 2025: $59 a barrel in 2026, $58 in 2027, $57 in 2028, $56 in 2029 and $55 in 2030, with annual indexation of 2% from 2031. Fifty dollars is below every step of that schedule.
Minfin had been signalling the shift. On 21 August the department responsible for the rule conceded in writing that the current trajectory “requires a more significant trajectory of change”, but named no new price. On 10 September Siluanov called $50 the baseline option. At that point it was a statement carried by a news agency and relayed on Minfin’s channel, not a legal norm. Now $50 appears in the ministry’s official text as a parameter of the submitted package. It is not yet law: no bill texts exist.
A lower line works both ways. It shrinks the part of the oil money that may be put into spending at all — and at the same time shrinks the automatic sale of NWF assets in months of weak oil. In the submitted package, Minfin chooses to leave more money in the fund by allowing less spending. This creates no new money; it moves the line.
The tax side of the same decision
When the rule deliberately narrows the spendable share of oil and gas revenue, the package looks elsewhere for revenue. It also includes amendments to the Tax Code. “Passive” income — dividends, interest on deposits, transactions in securities and digital rights, property sales, insurance income and gifts — moves into the main personal income tax base and its 13–22% scale, instead of the current 13–15%. Minfin estimates that the change will affect no more than 6% of the population, about 4 million people. The untaxed threshold for deposits up to 1 million roubles remains, and income received by war participants stays outside the change. Mutual funds must pay 15% profit tax on passive income. The rate on dividends paid to non-residents into type “C” accounts rises to 35% — in effect a tax on payouts that are blocked anyway. Cross-border e-commerce becomes subject to VAT at the standard 22% rate, with the platforms themselves acting as tax agents; separately, a customs fee of 100 roubles is introduced for each parcel worth up to 200 euros. Finally, the mining and metals sector:
“In the mining and metals sector, a tax is proposed for certain mining organisations equal to 30% of the additional income generated by growth in world prices for solid minerals, in rouble terms, from the base-year 2025 level (for gold — 20%).”
Not one of these measures carries a rouble estimate in the ministry’s text — separately or together.
What this changes in our model
Today — nothing. These are the parameters of a submitted package, not an adopted law, and no number our indicators read has moved.
If the base price is adopted, it will affect two series we measure. The liquid part of the NWF — 29 of 100, about $46.7 billion — would be drawn down more slowly: with weak oil, less would have to be sold. The budget deficit — 65 of 100, with a rolling twelve-month deficit of 3.3% of GDP — is the series whose 2027 plan has already been revised from 1.2% to “around 2%”. Oil and gas revenues would not be affected: our indicator measures the actual, inflation-adjusted level of revenue against 2021, and the base price is an accounting threshold that by itself neither adds nor removes money. The strength index stands at 47.1 of 100, in the stress zone. The current state of all eight indicators is on the monitor.
What we do not know
Whether article 96⁶ is being rewritten permanently. No bill texts exist — they are due in the State Duma by 1 October. We therefore do not know whether $50 replaces the whole $58→$55 trajectory in the Code or will apply only through the law “on the particulars of execution” for the three years, nor what happens to the 2% indexation from 2031.
The rouble parameters of the 2027 budget. The official text gives no revenue, spending or deficit total — only “around 2% of GDP annually”. Specific figures circulate in the press, but we have seen no primary document behind them and therefore do not cite them.
What forecast underlies the package. We have not read the “baseline scenario in the socio-economic development forecast”: economy.gov.ru is unreachable from our environment, as is government.ru with the transcript of the government’s 24 September session.
How much the tax measures would raise. The text gives no rouble estimate of receipts. The progression thresholds for passive income and the list of “certain mining organisations” subject to the windfall tax are also unknown.