IIS-3: Two Tax Breaks Bought With a Locked-In Minimum Term

An IIS-3 is an account at a broker or an asset-management company that carries a special tax regime: contributions earn back part of the tax you have already paid on other income, and the profit from trading is exempted from tax when the account is closed. In exchange, the money stays on the account until the end of a minimum term — for an account opened in 2026 that term is 5 years. Everything else about how the account behaves follows from that single trade: tax relief against the freedom to withdraw.

What the trade is worth at your own contribution, term and tax rate is what the IIS-3 calculator computes: it puts the take-home amount from a tax-privileged account next to the same money held in an ordinary brokerage account and breaks the difference down year by year. Below is what goes into that arithmetic and where the account's limits lie. Narrower questions are covered separately, with links placed where the question actually comes up.

Where the third type came from and what happened to the earlier ones

Since January 1, 2024, only the new-style account can be opened. The earlier types — one with a deduction on contributions, the other with a deduction on income — are no longer offered to new clients from that date. The law itself gives the new account no number: "IIS-3" and "third-type IIS" are everyday labels that took hold among intermediaries and in the press, so your contract may well contain neither of them.

The rules live in two places, and you have to read them separately. How the account is opened, how many you may hold and what you are allowed to do on it sits in the Federal Law "On the Securities Market", in the article on individual investment accounts. How the tax relief is computed and what happens to it at closure sits in Article 219.2 of the Tax Code. The first source answers "what can I do with the account", the second answers "what happens to the tax", and the answer to one does not contain the answer to the other.

Two tax breaks that are calculated in different ways

The first break is the deduction on contributions. The amount paid into the account during the year reduces the tax base on your other income, but by no more than RUB 400,000. There are two constraints here, and whichever bites first is the one that applies. The limit caps the base: there is no annual ceiling on what you may pay into the account itself, but a contribution above the limit grows the portfolio without growing the refund. And the refund itself is capped by the tax you actually paid on other income, and is computed at the rate at which that tax was paid. For someone with no taxable income the first break does nothing at all: there is nothing to give back.

The second break is the deduction on income. When the account is closed after the minimum term, the profit from trading is exempt from tax up to RUB 30m. Without it, that profit would be taxed exactly as on an ordinary account: at 13% while the annual base stays below RUB 2.4m, and at 15% on the portion above the threshold. How much tax a sale of securities would have cost you without the relief is what the tax calculator shows.

On the new-style account both breaks operate together, and that is what sets it apart from the earlier types. But adding them together in your head into a single "account yield" is a mistake, because they depend on different things. The refund on contributions is determined by the tax on your other income and has nothing to do with what the securities do. The income exemption is determined solely by the portfolio's result and fires once, at the very end. An account that ends in a loss receives the first break and not the second; the account of someone with no taxable income gets the reverse. How each one is computed, how the constraints stack on top of one another and when there is simply nothing to refund are covered in the piece on the IIS-3 tax deduction.

The term is the price of both breaks

An account opened in 2026 must stay alive for 5 years; the same requirement applied to accounts opened in 2024–2025. For accounts opened later the term lengthens with each successive year of opening, until it reaches the ceiling written into Article 219.2 of the Tax Code. From this follows a consequence that is easy to miss: the term is fixed to the account in the year it is opened, so the very same decision postponed into the future means a longer commitment.

The term is the account's main risk, and it is not a market risk. The price of securities can come back; money you need before the term is up can only be reached together with closing the account and losing the relief. That is why the question "what return will an IIS-3 give me" is secondary to the question "which money am I prepared not to touch for all that time". The calculator answers the first; only your own spending plan answers the second.

What you are allowed to hold on the account

An IIS-3 buys securities of Russian issuers; foreign securities cannot be bought onto such an account. The exact list of available instruments is set by the contract with your intermediary and by the regulator's acts, so before opening you check it against what you intended to hold: discovering a restriction after the first contribution costs more than discovering it before.

Picking the securities themselves is no different from picking them for an ordinary account. Candidates are screened in the same sections: stocks, bonds, among them government issues, and funds. What changes is the horizon. A security on an IIS-3 is chosen against a term that is known in advance: a bond redeeming inside the life of the account returns its face value on the terms of the issue, as long as the issuer honours the obligation, whereas a security with no redemption date has a price on the closing day that cannot be known ahead of time.

Dividends deserve a separate note. They can be paid not onto the IIS itself but onto a separate bank account; that arrangement was fixed by a law signed in 2024. It is a way of drawing current income without closing the account, but it does not widen the relief: tax on dividends is withheld at payment, and the income exemption at closure does not cover them. For a portfolio that lives off dividends, the second break delivers less than it does for a portfolio whose result comes from price growth. Upcoming equity payouts are collected in the dividends section, and the withholding mechanics are covered in the piece on dividend tax.

Withdrawing money almost always means closing the account

You cannot take part of the money out of an IIS-3 and leave the account running. The one exception is a withdrawal to pay for high-cost medical treatment; the list of qualifying treatment is approved by the Government. In every other case, taking the money out means closing the account.

That interest is what separates an early exit from simply forgoing the relief. You return not only what you received, but the interest as well; how it accrues and from which date is set by the Tax Code, and the version in force is checked on the day of closure. For this case the calculator prints no result: when the term is shorter than the minimum, an explanation stands where the figure would be, because showing a benefit that will not exist is not acceptable. Exactly what is lost, how the medical exception works and how to estimate the cost of an exit are covered in the piece on closing an IIS early.

Several accounts, changing intermediary, and the old IIS

You may hold three accounts of the new style at a time; a new account is not opened alongside a live IIS opened before 2024 — the old one is closed or converted first. Several accounts let you separate intermediaries and management styles: run one yourself at a broker, hand the other over to discretionary management.

The account is not tied to one intermediary forever: it can be transferred to another broker or asset manager without losing the accumulated term. With a commitment of this length that matters — over such a stretch, tariffs, service terms and the intermediaries themselves all change. An old IIS opened before 2024 can be converted into a new-style account; the old account's term counts towards the new one, but only within the bounds the law sets. The procedure for opening, transferring and converting, along with the contract clauses worth reading before you sign, are covered in the piece on how to open an IIS-3.

Protection if the intermediary goes bankrupt

From January 1, 2026, a guarantee system applies to IIS-3 accounts. If a broker or manager participating in the system becomes bankrupt, the IIS Guarantee Fund pays the account holder up to RUB 1.4m. This protection has boundaries, and each of them changes what the word "insured" means here.

1. Participation by the intermediary is voluntary. A licence does not by itself mean the account is protected: membership of the system is checked separately, and before opening.
2. The covered event is the intermediary's bankruptcy, not a loss. A fall in the price of securities is not a covered event, however deep it runs.
3. This is not deposit insurance. The system that reimburses a bank deposit up to RUB 1.4m does not extend to an IIS: the account has its own fund and its own rules.

The protection closes the intermediary risk; the risk of the securities stays yours. What that looks like in practice is visible in the feed of bond defaults and technical defaults: an issuer that has stopped paying does not become a covered event just because its bond happens to sit on an IIS. What is covered, what is not, and how guaranteeing differs from deposit insurance are covered in the piece on protection for an IIS-3.

Who the account does not suit, and when the above stops being true

The account loses its point, wholly or in part, in several situations.

• No taxable income. The first break does nothing; all that remains is the income exemption at the end of the term.
• The money might be needed before the term is up. An early exit turns the deductions you received into a debt to the budget, with interest.
• Foreign securities are in the plan. They cannot be bought on an IIS-3, and no amount of tax relief compensates for that.
• The portfolio's income is mostly dividends. Tax on them is withheld at payment, and the second break adds little.

If the term is the only obstacle, the comparison to make is not IIS-3 against a deposit but IIS-3 against an ordinary brokerage account. There, the long-term ownership relief applies: it is tied to how long you have held an individual security rather than to an account, and its minimum holding period is 3 years. The conditions under which each of the two options loses are covered in the piece on choosing between an IIS and a brokerage account.

Now about what may go out of date in this text itself. The account's rules are set by statute, and in a short span they have changed several times: the new style of account, the arrangement for paying dividends to a bank account, the guarantee system. The figures here are given as of the date this piece was prepared, but the term for accounts opened in the coming years is already different, and the version of Article 219.2 of the Tax Code in force is something you check yourself before opening. The list of available securities and participation in the guarantee system depend on the intermediary, not on the law. Finally, the calculator's output is arithmetic at a constant rate of return, not a forecast: it assumes the tax you have paid is enough to absorb the deduction, it ignores commissions, and real returns vary from year to year and are sometimes negative.

What to settle before the first contribution

1. Whether you have tax that can be refunded, and whether it is enough to absorb the deduction on the contribution you plan.
2. Which money will definitely not be needed before the end of the minimum term — and what happens if it is.
3. Which securities you intend to hold, and whether they are available on the account at your chosen intermediary.
4. Whether the intermediary participates in the IIS guarantee system.
5. What the contract says about transferring the account to another intermediary and about paying dividends to a bank account.

If the first two questions have no answer, it is too early to ask the rest: the deduction on contributions exists only for someone who pays tax, and both breaks exist only for someone who can wait. Which of those two questions is harder for you to answer?