Sergey Pepeliaev speaks at the Federal Tax Service’s academic and practical conference on tax administration

Experts from Pepeliaev Group have participated in the academic and practical conference “Good-faith tax administration: Interim results”. The event, which was held in Perm on 26 June 2025, was organised by the Russian Federal Tax Service jointly with Lebedev Russian State University of Jurisprudence.

Sergey Pepeliaev, the Managing Partner of Pepeliaev Group, took part in the panel session titled “Conciliation procedures. Developing the out-of-court settlement of tax disputes”. This was moderated by Deputy Head of the Russian Federal Tax Service, Victor Batsiev.

In his speech, Sergey Pepeliaev commented on the development of conciliation procedures. He noted that this is the form in which the constitutional right to legal certainty is exercised, while clear regulation in this field is a necessary condition for such procedures to be effective. The speaker also pointed to the fundamental shift in the field of digitalisation, underlining that it brings a pivotal change to traditional tax control. In addition, Mr Pepeliaev supported the initiative of publishing resolutions further to conciliation procedures and the settlement of disputes out of court.

Mr Pepeliaev and Ksenia Litvinova, a Partner at Pepeliaev Group, also participated in the session titled “Evidence and offering proof in tax disputes”, which was moderated by Alexander Matvienko, Deputy Head of the Federal Tax Service’s Legal Department and Mikhail Denisaev, Head of the Federal Tax Service’s Legal Department.

During his speech, Mr Pepeliaev commented on the moderator’s proposal to complete audit materials with an ‘evidence assessment roadmap’, noting that this is essentially a list of files from a tax case. According to Mr Pepeliaev, the roadmap will be a working tool for assessing the volume and quality of control activities and will enable taxpayers to protect their rights and interests more effectively.

Ms Litvinova pointed out that all parties to tax proceedings in court may abuse their procedural rights and disclose evidence in the latter stages of the process. To prevent events from taking such a course, courts must treat preliminary hearings more responsibly by determining for each party the subject to be proved, what the evidence should consist of and what the deadlines will be for such evidence to be presented.

The event in Perm was the fourth stage of the academic and practical conference on issues of effective tax administration. Earlier this year events were held in Kazan, Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk. The conference of the Federal Tax Service has become a platform in the field of tax law for a wide range of opinions to be exchanged.