How the Federal Tax Service dissects an IT company: code, people, rights, and money

The article examines the process of tax audits of IT companies by the Russian Federal Tax Service (FTS). The author notes that standard document requests often escalate into deep investigations, during which tax authorities analyze the business structure in detail: from source code authorship and server locations to the actual tasks performed by developers. Companies often provide excessive information that is later used against them to identify discrepancies. The core issue is that inspectors reconstruct the real picture of the business step-by-step by cross-referencing HR documents, correspondence, and technical data. The author emphasizes the importance of a strategic approach to interacting with tax authorities and warns about the risks of providing unstructured data that could lead to tax assessments. The article serves as a warning for IT business leaders about the necessity of thorough preparation for tax audits and understanding how the FTS analyzes IT assets.