The development of small and medium-sized businesses is one of the key tasks of any state. The purpose of this article is to analyze the methods of tax regulation that affect the development of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia and to substantiate the need for their further improvement. When writing the article, the methods of generalization and systems analysis were used; the methods of comparison and statistical analysis were used in the processing of information. Using official regulatory legal acts, criteria for classifying businesses as small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia and foreign countries and the existing measures of their state support in Russia are considered. On the basis of a summary of published research by Russian and foreign authors, the concept of “tax regulation” is considered, which the author understands as an element of the tax mechanism and refers to indirect methods of influence of the state on economic processes. For the purpose of assessing the efficiency of the methods of tax regulation of small business entities in Russia, the analysis of official statistical data in terms of the key indicators of their activity and their share of participation in the formation of the public revenue base is carried out. It has been established that changes in Russia’s state policy influence the change in the dynamics of the number of small and medium-sized businesses and the share of the taxes paid by them. Measures are proposed to improve the taxation of medium-sized enterprises under the general system of taxation and to further improve the special tax regimes in order to promote them and the possibility of their application by a wider range of small businesses and medium-sized enterprises. The conclusion is made that the methods of tax regulation applied by the government of Russia are not sufficiently effective and the conditions for taxing small business entities are more preferable, while there are no tax preferences for medium-sized businesses. The tax policy is not predictable and the moratorium on increasing the tax burden is not observed, as stated in the development strategy of this sector of the economy.