Samara cuts its 2026 budget as profit tax falls

On 5 November the official portal published law No. 99-GD of 30 October, amending Samara oblast's budget for 2026 and the planning period 2027 and 2028. Six hundred and forty pages, adopted by the oblast Duma on 20 October, signed by the acting governor, V. Shabalatov. Scanned without a text layer; we read it as images in this session.

It is the second amendment to this budget this year, and the first to cut it. The oblast's own preamble lists what came before: the law as passed on 2 December 2025, and one amendment published on 12 March 2026. Here is the line each version left behind, in thousands of roubles, as article 1 of each law states it:

“1) in article 1: in part 1: in the second paragraph, replace the amount ‘322 581 392’ with ‘309 794 401’; in the third paragraph, replace the amount ‘362 085 766’ with ‘344 677 734’; in the fourth paragraph, replace the amount ‘39 504 374’ with ‘34 883 333’;”

Against March the oblast has taken 12.79 billion roubles off what it expects to collect and 17.41 billion off what it expects to spend. Against the law it passed in December — the plan it opened the year with — revenue is 12.64 billion, or 3.9%, lower. Ten months into the year, Samara expects to collect less than it thought it would before the year began.

The deficit line reads the other way round, and it is worth being precise about it. Spending was cut harder than revenue this time, so the deficit is 4.62 billion smaller than it was in March. It is still 4.77 billion larger than in December. Both the cut and the gap are real at once.

This amendment was awaited. On 30 October the oblast government issued decree No. 742, suspending until 31 December 2026 the clauses of a 2021 decree under which it reimburses part of the interest companies pay on credits for investment projects in social services. The decree states its purpose as “bringing the volumes of financing of the oblast's expenditure obligations into line”, and its point 4 sets the condition:

“This decree enters into force on the day of its official publication, but not before the corresponding amendments to the Samara Oblast Law ‘On the Oblast Budget for 2026 and the Planning Period 2027 and 2028’ enter into force.”

The suspension could not begin until the budget was cut. The budget has now been cut.

One line holds the whole cut

Appendix 1, the revenue table, is restated in full in both the March and the October laws, so the two versions can be set side by side. Thousands of roubles, 2026:

The fall in profit tax, 17.04 billion roubles, is larger than the fall in total revenue, 12.79 billion. Everything else in the budget nets out to a partial offset: income tax on individuals rises 4.49 billion, excise falls 4.24 billion, and federal transfers in come down 54.8 million — article 4 of the law moves that line from 26 567 637 to 26 512 813.

Profit tax is levied on companies’ earnings, so it tends to react before other regional taxes when industry slows. The table shows that pattern: personal income tax rose, excise fell by about a tenth, and profit tax by nearly a fifth. Samara has now written the shortfall into law.

The plan for next year does not move. Appendix 1 leaves the 2027 profit tax line at 91 782 363,6 and the 2028 line at 94 260 487,4, untouched by this amendment. The oblast is therefore budgeting a 25.8% rebound in profit tax in 2027 from the level it has just accepted for 2026, in the same document in which it accepts it.

It cut borrowing headroom too

The ordinary way to absorb a revenue shortfall is to let the deficit widen and fund it. Samara did the opposite. Article 32 lowers the ceiling on the oblast's domestic state debt at every date it covers, and article 32 part 2 nearly halves what the oblast expects to pay to service that debt this year.

The 2027 ceiling is 23.0 billion roubles, or 22.0%, below where the oblast set it in December, and the sum it has set aside to service debt this year is half the December figure. A region that was short 17 billion of profit tax has cut its borrowing headroom and its interest bill rather than use them.

Appendix 16, the borrowing programme for 2026, shows what is left. In thousands of roubles: securities, 23 000 000 to be raised against 4 900 000 repaid; credits from banks, 65 861 307 raised against 59 800 000 repaid; budget credits from other budgets, 27 202 232 against 28 342 215. The programme's own totals are 116 063 539 raised and 93 042 215 repaid — net borrowing of 23.02 billion against a deficit of 34.88 billion. The remaining 11.86 billion comes from neither bonds nor banks: it is cash the oblast already holds, plus other sources.

Two details inside that table are worth lifting out. Almost all of the budget-credit column is one revolving facility: of the 27 202 232 raised, 26 869 517 is treasury credit to top up the balance on the oblast's single budget account, and the identical 26 869 517 is repaid inside the year. It nets to nothing and finances nothing; it covers gaps between receipts and payments. And the 23 billion bond issue is still in the plan: the 2027 and 2028 programmes schedule repayments of 4 600 000 and 9 200 000 against an “oblast bond loan of 2026”. As of 1 October, by the oblast's own nine-month execution report, none of it had been placed.

The cut lands on the municipalities

Article 21 cuts what the oblast sends down to local budgets by 6.67 billion roubles, or 8.9%, and it cuts the discretionary forms hardest. Thousands of roubles, 2026:

Subventions, which pay for duties the oblast has handed to municipalities and must therefore fund, fall least. Subsidies, which the oblast chooses, fall most. For 2027 the same article moves the total the other way, from 59 377 682 to 61 113 015.

What rises this year is the municipalities' permission to borrow. Article 30 lifts its two limits on budget credits to local budgets from 1 130 000 thousand roubles each to 1 330 000 and 1 230 000. The oblast is sending its municipalities less money and offering them more credit.

A second law published the same morning explains how the cut is to be held. Law No. 101-GD of 2 November, adopted at the same sitting of the Duma on 20 October and signed by the governor, V. Fedorishchev, renames the oblast's 2005 law “On the budget structure and budget process in Samara oblast” to “On interbudgetary relations in Samara oblast”, and narrows its preamble from the budget process as a whole to interbudgetary relations alone. Into articles 10 and 10² it writes a penalty:

“If the financial authority of a municipal district adopts a legal act imposing liability measures on a settlement in that district because the settlement administration failed to observe the procedure and deadlines for concluding an agreement on measures for socio-economic development and the improvement of municipal finances for the relevant financial year and/or because the settlement’s local authority failed in the reporting financial year to fulfil the obligations under the agreement … the subvention is reduced by the amount by which the equalisation dotation to the settlement from the oblast budget is reduced, as specified in the relevant legal act of the municipal district’s financial authority.”

A settlement that fails to sign, or fails to perform, an agreement on “measures for socio-economic development and the improvement of municipal finances” has its equalisation dotation cut by the district's finance department, and the district's subvention is then cut by the same amount — through an amendment to the oblast budget law. The squeeze on the bottom tier is made enforceable in the same week that it is made larger.

The same law carries a quieter change. In articles 4, 5, 9, 26 and 28, the words “according to the data of the statistical bodies as at the last reporting date” are replaced throughout by “according to the latest officially published data of the statistical bodies”. The formulas that distribute money between the oblast and its municipalities will no longer break if a Rosstat release is late. Most of this law takes effect on 1 January 2027 and applies from the 2027 budget onwards.

What is growing

Three items in the amendment move the other way.

Public normative obligations — payments the oblast owes named categories of people by its own law, which it cannot reduce without repealing the entitlement. Article 3 takes them from 19 441 682 thousand roubles in December to 26 360 260 in March and 33 296 045 now: +71.3% over the year, in a budget whose total spending is 2.2% below where it started.

A reserve for cutting the apparatus. Article 19 deletes an existing reserve of “up to 889 286 thousand roubles in 2026” and adds a new one:

“3) budget appropriations provided under the subsection ‘Other general-government matters’ of the section ‘General-government matters’ of the budget expenditure classification, in an amount of up to 234 400 thousand roubles in 2026 to finance payroll costs, including payroll charges, for employees of Samara Oblast state authorities … and compensation payments to employees of Samara Oblast state authorities … arising from the implementation of instructions of the President of the Russian Federation and decisions of the Governor of Samara Oblast and Government of Samara Oblast concerning reorganisation, abolition, structural changes and reductions (changes) in the staffing levels of Samara Oblast state authorities.”

Up to 234.4 million roubles is set aside for wage costs and compensation arising from reorganising, abolishing, restructuring and cutting staff in the oblast's own government bodies. Two further laws published the same morning, No. 103-GD and No. 102-GD, create a second post of first deputy governor and amend the law on holders of state office accordingly. The texts do not state whether the reserve will pay for those changes: the budget law identifies no body, post or headcount.

Luhansk. Article 19 part 2 point 19 of the budget law lets the government move appropriations for infrastructure in occupied territory without amending the budget. The amendment adds four words to it: after “Donetsk People’s Republic”, the text now reads “and Luhansk People’s Republic”.

One more line falls, and it is not a municipal one: the oblast's transfer to the Pension and Social Insurance Fund for 2026 goes from 13 039 616 thousand roubles in December to 12 556 316 in March and 11 235 542 now — 1.80 billion, or 13.8%, below the opening plan.

What this means for the series we track

We measure the consolidated regional budget balance as a rolling twelve-month total for all of Russia's regions together. It stands at a deficit of 1.466 trillion roubles, scoring 33 of 100 against a pre-war anchor of a 0.661 trillion surplus at the end of 2021 and a registered trouble line at a 2.5 trillion deficit. Our guide to regional budgets explains how the series is built. This law does not move the regional reading in this morning's run; the strength index is 45.9 of 100, in the stress zone.

One region's amendment shows how the adjustment was made within that total. Samara's deficit is smaller than it was in March, which appears as an improvement in the national series. It shrank because the oblast cut spending by more than its revenue fell. Beneath that headline, transfers to municipalities and to the social fund were cut while the payments the oblast owes individuals by law rose. The amendment records both changes; it does not say money moved between them. The remaining deficit is financed by 23.02 billion of net borrowing and 11.86 billion from cash balances and other sources. A regional balance improved this way is not the same as one improved by a recovery in revenue, and the series cannot tell them apart.

Who else has written it down

Three days ago Murmansk named a 40% collapse in profit tax from its key payers as the direct cause of its commercial debt — 78 billion roubles owed, 57.6% of it to banks, 7.4 billion a year to service. Samara starts from the same place and goes the other way: it has taken the shortfall out of its spending and lowered its debt ceiling instead of raising its borrowing. Two days ago Sverdlovsk, which owes banks nothing, covered a 34.2 billion deficit out of accumulated balances and reported profit tax down 13.0%. The three regions differ in how much room they had. They do not differ in what happened to the tax.

On 19 October we reported Khakassia moving 106 million roubles onto payroll without touching its budget law. Samara has done the visible version of the same adjustment: six hundred and forty pages, passed by a parliament, and published.

What we do not know

Where the extra 13.9 billion of public normative obligations goes. Article 3 gives one total. The breakdown by type of payment lives in appendices 4 and 5 — the departmental structure of spending, several hundred pages — which we did not read.

How many people the 234.4 million covers. The law gives no headcount, and neither do the two laws restructuring the government published beside it.

Whether the 23 billion bond issue happens. The programme books it, and schedules its repayment across 2027 and 2028. Nothing had been placed at 1 October, and the law does not say why the oblast expects the last quarter to be different.

What the suspensions cost. Decree No. 742 names the subsidy it suspends and the date it suspends it to. It gives no sum. It was published on 3 November alongside other Samara decrees of the same day carrying the same conditional clause, which we have not read individually; without the departmental appendices none of them can be matched to a line in the budget.

Why the shortfall is this size. The law records the number, not its cause. No explanatory note accompanies it in the register, and we found no oblast statement attributing the 17 billion to particular taxpayers or sectors.