The article is devoted to the analysis of the evolution of the tax policy of the Russian government with regard to inland water transport in the 19th century. The government of the Russian Empire, striving to unify the tax system on inland water transport for all regions of the country, at the same time could not choose an effective object of taxation for a long time. Under the conditions of increasingly accelerating technical revolution, any errors in tax policy led to a reduction in the volume of domestic trade, slowing down the technical modernization of the country's river economy, and the growth of monopolism in inland water transport. The latter tendency was especially pronounced on the Belaya, the largest river of the Southern Urals, where the development of steamship transportation was suspended for almost a decade due to the imperfection of the Russian tax legislation. Relying on a complex of normative-legal acts, materials of regional statistics and press, the author analyzes the tax policy of the state in Russia in relation to inland water transport in the studied period, as well as the influence of this policy on the development of navigation on the Belaya River.