What do Slovenian consulting without reports and Vladimir freight carriers without staff have in common? For the tax inspectorate and the courts, they amounted to a scheme for withdrawing money while minimizing taxes. On April 6, 2026, the Arbitration Court of the Volga-Vyatka District put an end to the four-year case of Yutex Ru LLC (Resolution of the Arbitration Court of the Volga-Vyatka District dated 06.04.2026 No. F01-5805/2026 in case No. A11-3687/2022). The company tried to challenge additional assessments of RUB 7.6 million in profit tax and RUB 17.3 million in VAT, insisting that the consulting services of its Slovenian “subsidiary” were real and that it had acted in good faith when selecting carriers. However, the courts of three instances took a different view: the consulting services turned out to be a cover for dividends, and the carriers were “technical” companies created for unlawful VAT refunds. We examine a decision that changes the approach to transfer pricing and due diligence.
Yutex Ru LLC (Vladimir Region, production of nonwoven materials) actively used the services of two groups of counterparties in 2016–2018. The first was its Slovenian parent company Yutex LLC. The second was Russian transport companies VladLogistika LLC, Trust-Logistik LLC and ANV Transport Company LLC. Following an on-site tax audit, the Interdistrict Tax Inspectorate issued a decision assessing additional taxes, penalties and fines totaling more than RUB 29 million. The company challenged part of the episodes in court — those relating to RUB 3.6 million in profit tax on consulting services, RUB 1.86 million in tax on income of a foreign organization (reclassified as dividends) and almost RUB 17.3 million in VAT on transport services.
The Arbitration Court of the Vladimir Region (decision dated 12.09.2025) and the First Arbitration Appellate Court (resolution dated 25.11.2025) fully supported the tax authorities. The cassation appeal of Yutex Ru was also dismissed. Which arguments proved decisive?
The taxpayer included in profit tax expenses RUB 18.27 million paid to Slovenian Yutex LLC under the relevant agreement. Formally, the payments were for “information and technical support”. However, the audit revealed irremediable defects in the document flow.
Empty acts. All acts of completed work over three years contained the same name of the service — with no breakdown, no indication of volume and no specifics. There were no reports, minutes or timesheets. The court did not accept references to “expense breakdowns”: they also did not make it possible to understand what exactly had been done and how the price had been formed.
No real business need. At the same time, Yutex Ru entered into contracts for similar SAP services with other Slovenian and Belgian companies, and detailed reports were provided under those contracts. Why duplicate services through the parent company if they were already being provided by third-party contractors? No answer followed.
Qualification as hidden dividends. The tax authority and the courts applied the principle of “substance over form” (Article 54.1 of the Russian Tax Code and Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Arbitration Court No. 53). Payments to the parent company had no business purpose — they merely compensated expenses that the owner bears out of distributed profit. Since the fact that services were rendered was not proven, the transferred funds should be treated as dividends. Dividends paid to a foreign organization are subject to withholding tax at the rate of 10% (Article 10 of the Convention with Slovenia). Result: RUB 1.86 million in additional profit tax assessed to the company as a tax agent.
The district court specifically emphasized that requalification of payments is permissible even if the parties called them consulting payments. What matters is not the name, but the economic substance.
The second block of claims concerned VAT deductions in the amount of RUB 17.3 million based on invoices from three transport companies. Yutex Ru entered into cargo transportation agreements with them in 2016–2018. However, the audit revealed a classic “technical” scheme.
Signs of shell companies. All three counterparties had no own vehicles, no staff (a maximum of three people, and two had none), while rental, utility and tax expenses were minimal. All of them were later liquidated as inactive legal entities.
Transit nature of operations. The money received from Yutex Ru (each counterparty’s share of revenue from it was 75–98%) was then transferred further — to a transport company, individual entrepreneurs (without VAT), and also to an individual. The final recipients were the real owners of freight vehicles applying the simplified taxation system and not charging VAT.
Control by a single center. Interrogations of former logistics employees showed that working specifically with these “carriers” was a direct instruction from Yutex Ru’s deputy general director. In all three companies, the representative was the founder of the transport company. Thus, the taxpayer directly coordinated the chain through which money went into the “simplified tax system”, while VAT was claimed for deduction from the budget.
The courts stated that the real services were rendered by entrepreneurs without VAT, while the logistics companies were “technical” links created solely for unlawful tax refunds. Therefore, the VAT deductions were illegal, and the company failed to exercise due diligence.
Yutex Ru insisted that it had checked the counterparties: it requested charter documents, tax registration certificates, state registration certificates and extracts from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. However, the district court indicated that a formal document check is insufficient when obvious “red flags” are present:
The taxpayer should have known that its partners could not actually provide transport services. This is especially true because the company’s logistics employees communicated directly with the organizer of the transportation, not with employees of the disputed legal entities. This directly indicates coordinated actions.
The Resolution of the Arbitration Court of the Volga-Vyatka District dated 06.04.2026 in case No. A11-3687/2022 is an important precedent in two dimensions.
International consulting. The courts confirmed the right of tax authorities to reclassify “grey” management and consulting payments to parent companies as dividends if there is no detail of services, no economic substance and no real business purpose. This threatens additional profit tax assessments (for expenses excluded from the tax base) plus withholding tax (9–15% of the dividend amount).
Transport schemes. The standard practice of using intermediaries on the simplified tax system to “mark up” VAT was recognized as unlawful if the real contractor works without tax and the “technical” company has no resources. A tax benefit cannot be justified by reference to formal invoice paperwork.
The Yutex Ru case is a reminder: tax authorities and arbitration courts are increasingly applying Article 54.1 of the Russian Tax Code and looking at economic reality rather than paper reporting. Companies using, for example, foreign “consulting” without reports and transport chains with simplified-tax intermediaries are now in the zone of maximum risk. Tax reconstruction (calculating taxes based on the actual substance of transactions) is becoming a relevant standard of law enforcement.
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