Problems of large operators lead to higher prices for vehicle inspections in Tatarstan

“They will be made public within a month”

Stavropol, Tyumen, Rostov and Amur regions as well as the Jewish Autonomous Region were the Leaders of the campaign for annual tariff indexation. Samara region and the Republic of Mordovia prepared and made public drafts of new tariffs. Technical inspection there will cost 7.3-7.5% more than in 2024.

In Tatarstan, in 2024, tariffs increased by 11.9%. For example, technical inspection for a passenger car increased in price from 913 to 1,022 rubles, and a diagnostic card for vehicles transporting hazardous goods — from 2,545 to 2,848 rubles.

The annual increase in tariffs is due to the order of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service. It should be done taking into account the data of the inspection operators on their expenses, on the basis of which an economically justified tariff is calculated, but if the data is sent by less than 50% of the operators in the region, the indexation is carried out by the regional government. In 2023, it was carried out in most regions, this year the same situation is developing, a number of regions have already reported that the operators did not send information on expenses, and the tariffs will be indexed according to inflation.

The Tatarstan State Committee on Tariffs did not name specific figures for 2025 to Realnoe Vremya, and they did not say whether the inspection operators provided their data.

“The maximum fees for technical inspection from 1 January 2025 will be made public within a month,” the committee reported.

“We need to proceed from the cost of a standard hour”

“Today, the cost of the service for conducting a technical inspection of vehicles does not allow the industry to develop normally, and businesses are not interested in investing money in this industry,” believes Chairman of the Union of Technical Inspection Operators Maxim Burdyugov. “The cost of this service should be set based on the cost of a standard hour on average in the region. For example, in Moscow and the Moscow region, the cost of vehicle diagnostics is on average about 3,500-4,000 rubles.”

Burdyugov emphasised: during maintenance, diagnostics are carried out according to more than 50 points, requirements and mandatory safety requirements. This is good from a safety point of view, but expensive for technical inspection operators, he explained, since complex diagnostic equipment, which is not available at all service stations, requires inspections, repairs and periodic replacement.

He also noted that the cost of technical inspection cannot be the same in the regions. For example, maintaining a technical inspection point in the northern regions is much more expensive than in the southern ones, since heating costs differ dramatically.

The larger, the less profitable?

The cost of technical inspection, and therefore the maximum tariffs for this service, may be affected by two circumstances:

Since 1 October 2024, vehicle inspection services provided by technical inspection operators in accordance with the law have been excluded from the list of transactions not subject to VAT. From this date, the sale of such services is subject to VAT at a rate of 20%. As a result, accredited technical inspection operators who fully maintain accounting records under the general taxation system (GTS) have lost 20% of their income since 1 October 2024;

from 1 January 2025, organisations and entrepreneurs using the simplified taxation system (STS) whose income for the previous year did not exceed 60 million rubles also become payers of value added tax.

Former head of the largest Tatarstan technical inspection operator Tattekhkontrol, a member of the working group developing changes to regulatory documents related to technical inspection Marat Yarmiyev believes that this particular expense item will not affect most small technical inspection operators.

Tattekhkontrol is one of the largest technical inspection operators in Tatarstan. According to information from SPARK service, the revenue of this company in 2023 amounted to almost 172 million rubles, and the net profit was 38.6 million.

Realnoe Vremya contacted Tattekhkontrol with a telephone request about potential expenses associated with the new conditions of the technical inspection services market and innovations in tax legislation, as well as about wishes for the maximum tariff for this service in 2025. However, the company's CEO Yuri Stavnichenko refused to comment.

Hope for the secondary market

Since 2021, private car owners must undergo technical inspection only in the case of registering and re-registering a car older than four years as well as when making changes to the design of the vehicle. And the situation in the technical inspection services market, according to Yarmiyev, is aggravated by the fact that after the cancellation of mandatory technical inspection for passenger cars in personal use by citizens, this market has noticeably narrowed.

However, the media published the opinion of the editor-in-chief of Behind the Wheel magazine Maxim Kadakov who believes that the increase in recycling fee rates since 1 October will entail an increase in prices for new cars, and this may lead to an increase in sales on the secondary market, therefore, the number of re-registrations of old cars will increase and the demand for technical inspection services will increase. All this should theoretically revive the situation on the market of technical inspection services and to some extent compensate for the losses of operators.

From a safety point of view

Marat Yarmiyev is convinced that it is necessary to return to the practice of mandatory technical inspection, which was cancelled for private cars due to the fact that the inspection turned into a sham when both some operators and insurance agents sold documents on passing the technical inspection without any real inspection. And the matter, he says, is not only and not so much in the lost income of operators:

“Technical inspection turned into a fiction, but a working group I was a member of prepared a new bill, where everything was taken into account. Yes, diagnostic cards were sold, and probably only 20% of cars actually came in for technical inspection. But even when the traffic police were in charge of technical inspection, and everything was much stricter, and even then there were loopholes... However, we are talking about safety! It is one thing when 10% did not come in, and 90% came in and checked the cars, and another when it became the opposite, and then they stopped coming in altogether.”

Now, says Yarmiyev, the Russian car fleet is aging for objective reasons and will be updated more slowly, and new cars often come in through parallel import in an unclear condition, and this will inevitably affect safety. He also noted that it is difficult to hope to obtain objective statistics on accidents caused by the poor condition of the car — it is easier for state traffic inspectors who arrive at the accident to indicate the cause as paragraph 10.1 of the Road Traffic Regulations and write down that the driver did not choose the correct speed limit and did not take into account the road conditions, rather than look for the cause in the form of a technical malfunction.

“The bill [on technical inspection] that we developed was excellent, it only remained to be perfected, and instead we are now conducting an experiment — a very bad, dangerous experiment,” he concluded.