FBK Legal Partner Alexander Grigoriev on Tax Dispute Mediation for Pravo.ru
Pravo.ru has published the results of a study on Russia's mediation market. While mediation is widely recognised as a faster, more confidential, and cost-effective alternative to litigation, its practical adoption remains limited despite growing market interest. Businesses increasingly pursue negotiations to protect their reputation, with in-house counsel integrating mediation into corporate practices and lawyers acquiring new qualifications. The study captures perspectives from all market participants: businesses, in-house legal departments, lawyers, judges, and mediators themselves.
Alexander Grigoriev comments:
‘Mediation suits those tax disputes where communication between taxpayers and inspectors has broken down. It is also applicable when applying the doctrine of substance over form, or when resolution requires deep understanding of both actual circumstances and relationships and industry-specific business contexts. Currently, most tax disputes settle pre-trial – often before audits begin. The Federal Tax Service (FTS) has already developed effective mechanisms for this, and mediation could operate within them. Yet such practice remains rare. Mediation in tax disputes is not mainstream; it is more of a prototype experiment. We are still determining how mediation techniques can be formally structured for tax conflict resolution’.
Russia's first successful tax mediation case came about in 2020 between the FTS and ‘Rif’. When an audit revealed potential tax defaults, mediator-facilitated negotiations achieved consensus.
