for corporate accounts used to be much more prominent before 2000, when the national accounting regulator ceased to incentivize the accounting fair value option. At present, the mass appraisal of property for taxation purposes is also starting to be outsourced by the Government to the institution of professional valuers. Adjudication of valuer-certified estimates of value in case of the onset of disputes is conducted through the Experts Councils of valuers' SROs. Official courts tend to concur with the resolutions of such Councils. In some rare instances the imprimatur of SRO's Experts Councils is also required for a valuation done by a particular valuer to enter into effect. The technical details of practice of real estate valuers in Russia are aligned with the international pattern. Members of the Russian Society of Appraisers formerly were bound by the observance of the International Valuation Standards. There also exists a set of 14 general-purpose government-developed "Federal Valuation Standards" (FSOs 1,2,3 --are the general valuation standards first adopted in 2007 (and revised 2015) and covering Terms of engagement and Valuation report content requirements, FSOs 7–11 are asset-specific standards adopted in 2015, while FSO 9 is currently the only purpose-specific standard in the set dealing with valuations of property for loan security purposes; the last two FSO standards adopted in 2016 cover determination of investment and liquidation values, however, they do not touch on the methodology for determining these values, only scraping the reporting requirements). In view of the international conformity drive in the latest round of FSO standards setting, general requirements in the new FSO standards are close to those in the International Valuation standards set, however they can be more specific on occasion and mandate compulsory disclosure of uncertainty in valuation reports using the interval/range format. With effect from 1 August 2017, new amendments to the Federal Valuation Law came to impose the compulsory certification of valuers by a state-affiliated testing centre. Consequently, this two-hour written exam certification measure, aimed to counter a perception of wide-spread malpractice among the members of the national valuation profession, provides for three valuer-specializations: real estate valuers, plant and machinery valuers, and business and intangible asset valuers, with the exam content requirements varying substantially for each specialization. Valuers would lose a right to practice, unless they comply with the requirement to take this compulsory certification exam at or before 31 March 2018. A general assessment of this measure is