"Tax maneuver", deoffshorization of economy and other directions of modern Russian tax policy

The tax policy of the Russian Federation for 2015 and subsequent periods was developed under the urge to choose between the need to significantly increase tax revenues to the budget and avoid an increase in the tax burden on the economy. As a result, the new tools of the tax system were adopted, allowing supporting the public sector through better tax control and administration and reasonable redistribution of the tax burden between the sectors of the economy, legal entities and individuals. The major innovations of the Russian tax policy are: - "tax maneuver" is a set of changes to the tax system, including: expansion of the list of excisable goods; the tax increase on dividend income from 9% to 13% for organizations and individuals; indexation of water tax; gradual reduction of export duties on oil and petroleum products with a simultaneous increase in mining extraction tax (oil and gas condensate); - measures to counter the reduction in the tax base and the transfer of income, including: taxation of undistributed profits of controlled foreign companies, elimination of tax advantages for foreign companies; countering tax evasion by beneficial owners; improvement of the practices in the transfer legislation; - a new procedure for taxation of real estate of individuals; - a set of tax measures to increase the investment attractiveness of regions of East Siberia and the Far East; - measures to further improve tax administration mechanisms: improvement of functionality of taxpayers' personal account for legal entities; the establishment of the taxpayers' personal account for individual entrepreneurs; the improvement of electronic document flow between taxpayers and tax authorities; the introduction of horizontal tax monitoring; the introduction of the institute of advance tax ruling; the development of the law on tax consulting; the change of conceptual approaches to tax audits; the use of the new VAT administration architecture; expansion of forms and mechanisms of international cooperation; - promotion of investment and ensuring the outpacing social and economic development in the Far East, several regions of Eastern Siberia, and the Crimea; - an introduction of "tax holidays" for small business - individual entrepreneurs and self-employed and other. The assessment of the tax policy implemented by the Russian Federation allows to conclude that the new tax initiatives being introduced are mainly focused at "targeted" improvement of methods and instruments of the tax system. It is time to develop a brand new tax policy based on an advanced methodology of tax systems construction, consistent with the country's strategic development objectives and clearly defining the set of the most significant issues in the tax system: who and what is taxed, what proportions to choose when distributing tax burden and revenues, who and under what conditions receives tax exemptions, whose interests are of higher priority at this stage of development of the country and other.

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