The paper identifies and examines in a global context the main features of the budgetary system of the Russian Federation in terms of the structure of the tax burden, distribution of tax revenues, tax autonomy, vertical imbalance and the use of tax sharing rates. The analysis is based on data from the Federal Treasury, the Federal Tax Service of Russia, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) organization. The study is characterized by the breadth of the subject and sources of information, analysis of qualitative indicators of fiscal systems and their quantitative criteria at several tiers of interbudgetary relations, accounting of rental revenues and insurance payments, as well as the assessment of inconsistencies in methodologies and tax statistics in Russia, other countries and international organizations. It is shown that Russia has developed a unique model of fiscal federalism. On the one hand, it is close to the model of Austria and partly Indonesia and South Africa – with low tax independence, poorly developed tax sharing rates and high imbalance at the intraregional level. On the other hand, it has the features of developed federations – with a significant level of decentralization and vertical balance at the federal level. However, the assessment of decentralization in Russia may be overestimated by high rental revenues, which usually refers to non-tax revenues. It has been established that the developed extractive sector in Russia makes it possible to reduce the tax burden on the main factors of production. In addition, a parity in the three main types of taxes – on income, labor and goods and services – indicates that the tax burden in Russia is not only small by world standards, but also balanced. A small and declining volume of tax revenues at the level of local budgets has been revealed, and the gap from developed federations in this aspect, and even from Brazil, is increasing. For the first time, it is formulated that it is impossible for s fiscal system to have simultaneously high levels of all three main indicators – vertical imbalance, tax independence at the subnational level and the scale of use of tax sharing rates.