RAS bookkeeping, statutory reporting and the numbers head office can use.
Russian accounting decides something most foreign parents only discover later: whether you can take money out. Dividends can only be paid from RAS profit, not the IFRS profit your group reports. We run the statutory side properly in 1C, reconcile it to your group's numbers, and tell you what is actually distributable.
Foreign parents tend to treat Russian accounting as a compliance chore — something the local team does so the tax authority stays quiet. Then they try to pay a dividend and discover the point of it. Dividends from a Russian LLC can only be declared out of RAS profit — the profit shown in the Russian statutory accounts — not the IFRS profit the group consolidates. A company can be comfortably profitable in the group accounts and legally unable to distribute a rouble. This is one of the most common surprises for parent-company finance teams, and it is entirely avoidable.
Under Federal Law No. 402-FZ, every entity registered in Russia — including one that is 100% foreign-owned — must keep its accounting records and prepare its statutory accounts under Russian Accounting Standards. IFRS is not accepted for Russian statutory purposes, even where your group's auditors have signed off on consolidated accounts that include the Russian subsidiary. The two run in parallel, and the Russian set is the one with legal consequences.
Double-entry bookkeeping on the unified chart of accounts approved by Ministry of Finance Order No. 94n.
Records in Russian. Primary documents must be in Russian or accompanied by a translation — a foreign-language invoice on its own does not support the expense.
A correctly formatted primary document for every transaction. Without it, the expense is not accepted for accounting or tax purposes, regardless of whether the money moved.
Tax registers maintained separately, because CIT is calculated on rules that diverge from RAS at a number of points.
This is the part worth reading twice. RAS profit and IFRS profit diverge for structural reasons — lease accounting, depreciation lives, provisions, revenue deferral, FX retranslation on long-term intercompany balances, deferred tax under PBU 18/02 rather than IAS 12. The gap is normal. What is not normal is discovering it in the quarter you planned to extract cash.
If dividends matter to your group, the RAS/IFRS reconciliation is not a reporting nicety — it is the forecast of what you can actually take out, and it needs to exist before the decision, not after. We produce it as a standing item rather than on request.
Russian statutory accounting and tax reporting is built around 1C, used by more than 90% of Russian organisations; the FTS, Rosstat and the SFR all accept filings through 1C-based reporting modules. A provider not working in 1C creates real friction — returns re-entered by hand, reconciliation with the FTS made harder, data you cannot easily verify.
For groups on SAP, Oracle or Dynamics the standard answer is a dual setup: 1C for Russian statutory compliance, with a monthly export into the group ERP for consolidation. Where a full IFRS view is needed inside 1C, parallel accounting can be configured — typically ₽200,000–600,000 to set up, and it needs someone with both 1C implementation experience and IFRS knowledge, which is a rarer combination than it sounds. For smaller operations a manual IFRS overlay at period-end is cheaper and more error-prone; it usually stops scaling before people expect.
We are not listing horrors to sell a service. These are the five things we actually find, in roughly this order, when we inherit a set of Russian books.
The CIT rate. Russia raised it from 20% to 25% on 1 January 2025. Providers who did not update 1C in time have been filing advances and returns at the old rate. That is an underpayment with interest, not a formatting error.
Input VAT from counterparties who never paid their own output VAT. The FTS denies it routinely at desk audit. A provider who does not run counterparty checks quietly accumulates a position that will be reversed.
Missing or malformed primary documents. The entry exists, the document does not, and the expense fails at audit.
Payroll and accounting disagreeing. Where a separate provider runs payroll, accruals, NDFL and contributions have to reconcile into the books. When they do not, the FTS and the SFR notice before you do.
Documents posted to the wrong period, particularly at year-end — which distorts both the CIT base and the distributable profit figure you were relying on.
The statutory cycle is fixed and the January-to-March window carries most of the load: the annual CIT return by 25 March, annual financial statements to Rosstat by 31 March, VAT quarterly at the 22% rate that applies from January 2026, CIT advances quarterly, property and transport tax annually where relevant. One change worth flagging: from 2026 a company whose sole director takes no salary must still file RSV. A dormant LLC with no turnover is not exempt — and dormant entities are exactly where filings get forgotten.
A statutory audit is required if revenue exceeded ₽800 million in the preceding year, or balance sheet assets exceeded ₽400 million at year-end, or the company operates in a sector where audit is mandatory by law. Below those thresholds it is not a legal requirement, though foreign parents often require one as group policy. Either way the audit conclusion goes to the FTS with the annual accounts, and the books either support it or they do not.
We run the statutory side properly — bookkeeping in 1C, VAT, CIT, Rosstat, property tax — and translate it into something your finance team can use: a monthly P&L and balance sheet in English, actual cash flow, the RAS/IFRS reconciliation, and a clear answer to what is distributable. Where we also run payroll, the two reconcile by construction rather than across a gap between providers. If you are moving from another provider, we reconcile the position before taking it on. Our advisers trained at the Big Four and work in English, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.
Every transaction posted to the Russian chart of accounts under RAS, with primary documents checked rather than assumed — because an entry without a valid document is not an expense.
The full filing calendar run as one cycle: VAT quarterly at 22%, CIT advances and the annual return by 25 March, financial statements to Rosstat by 31 March, property and transport tax.
The reconciliation between the profit your group reports and the profit Russian law lets you pay out — produced as a standing item, before the dividend decision rather than after it.
Monthly P&L, balance sheet and actual cash flow in English, with the ratios and KPI lines your group needs — not a translated Russian form.
Taking over from another provider without inheriting their arithmetic unexamined — including the CIT-rate error we find more often than any other.
Statutory audit preparation and support where the thresholds bite — revenue over ₽800m or assets over ₽400m — or where group policy requires one regardless.
You want to pay a dividend and nobody has confirmed the RAS profit supports it.
Your provider may still be filing CIT at 20% after the rate went to 25%.
Head office cannot read the Russian reporting and is working from a spreadsheet someone types up.
You are moving provider and want the position checked before you inherit it.
Your dormant Russian entity has not filed anything for a while and you are unsure whether it should have.
The group planned a dividend on the strength of three profitable years in the consolidated accounts. The RAS retained earnings were close to nil: lease treatment, depreciation lives and a provision the previous accountant had never booked accounted for almost the whole gap. Nobody had produced a reconciliation, so nobody knew. We rebuilt the RAS position, corrected the CIT rate — still filed at 20% into the second quarter of 2025 — and produced the reconciliation as a standing monthly item. The dividend went out two quarters later than planned, which was two quarters earlier than if they had found out at the board meeting.
Before taking the books on, we check what is in them — the CIT rate, the VAT position, the primary documents, the payroll reconciliation.
1C configured for your reality: statutory RAS, the export your group ERP needs, and parallel IFRS where it earns its cost.
Bookkeeping, VAT, CIT advances, payroll integration and the filing calendar — on the statutory dates.
Monthly pack in English, RAS/IFRS reconciliation, and a straight answer on distributable profit.
No — and this is the single most consequential fact on this page. Dividends from a Russian LLC can only be declared from RAS profit, the profit in the Russian statutory accounts. A company with a healthy IFRS profit can have a small or negative RAS profit and be legally unable to distribute anything. If dividends matter to your group, the RAS/IFRS reconciliation needs to exist before the decision, not after it.
Yes. Under Federal Law No. 402-FZ every entity registered in Russia must keep accounts and file statutory statements under Russian Accounting Standards. IFRS is not accepted for Russian statutory purposes even where group auditors have signed off consolidated accounts including the Russian subsidiary. The two run in parallel.
In practice, yes. More than 90% of Russian organisations use it and the FTS, Rosstat and SFR all accept filings through 1C-based modules. Groups on SAP, Oracle or Dynamics normally run a dual setup: 1C for Russian statutory compliance with a monthly export to the group ERP. Parallel IFRS accounting can be configured inside 1C — around ₽200,000–600,000 to set up, and it needs someone with both 1C and IFRS expertise.
The CIT rate. Russia went from 20% to 25% on 1 January 2025 and providers who did not update 1C have been filing at the old rate — an underpayment with interest. After that: input VAT from counterparties who never paid their own output VAT, missing primary documents, payroll that does not reconcile into the accounting records, and documents posted to the wrong period at year-end.
Yes, and this catches people. A dormant LLC with no turnover still files. From 2026 a company whose sole director takes no salary must file RSV as well, under the pension reform. Dormant entities are precisely where filings get forgotten, and the penalties do not care that nothing was happening.
Only if revenue exceeded ₽800 million in the preceding year, or balance sheet assets exceeded ₽400 million at year-end, or you are in a sector where audit is mandatory by law. Below those thresholds it is not required, though foreign parents often require one as group policy. The conclusion is filed with the FTS alongside the annual accounts.
Yes. We reconcile the position before taking it on rather than after — you should know what you are inheriting. That is what the Switch Package is for: review of the current provider and 1C, a structured handover with no missed filings, reconciliation of the position, and a clear compliance calendar at the end of it.
Russian statutory reporting requires 1C:Enterprise — the FTS and Rosstat reporting interfaces are built around 1C data structures. Most international groups run a dual-system approach: 1C for Russian statutory compliance, with data exported monthly to the group ERP for consolidation. We handle the 1C side and provide data in whatever format your group system requires.
Rosstat filing is due by 31 March. Late filing: administrative fine of RUB 3,000–5,000 per officer (director, chief accountant). Repeated failures increase the fine. More significantly, banks and counterparties can check Rosstat filings — a missing filing raises questions. We can file catch-up accounts for prior years where records are available.
Yes — a large part of our accounting practice involves Chinese-owned Russian entities. We handle CNY-denominated intercompany transactions, yuan-ruble FX accounting, China-Russia transfer pricing documentation, and IFRS management packs for Chinese parent companies. We work in Chinese as well as English and Russian.
Our fees depend on transaction volume — the number of bank transactions, invoices and primary documents per month. For a straightforward service operation with 50–150 transactions per month, fees typically start at RUB 35,000–50,000/month for full statutory compliance. We quote specifically after reviewing your transaction profile.
By email, WhatsApp, Telegram or WeChat. Describe your situation briefly — we don’t need everything upfront.
A named adviser replies — not a generic inbox. We confirm whether we can help and propose a call if needed.
We ask about your situation, Russian entity structure and what you need. No charge. In English, Russian or Chinese.
Clear scope, fee and timeline. We start on receipt of the signed letter. No retainer lock-in on project work.
Practical support for international business in Russia.