Abstract

Abstract

By the "Main Directions of the Budget, Tax, and Customs Tariff Policy for 2021 and the planning period of 2022 and 2023", voluntary registration for foreign suppliers using the VAT office when carrying out any type of activity (sales to Russian buyers) is stated as part of the topical issues of taxation in the future. This issue was proposed by the business community and should be considered by the Government of the Russian Federation soon. In Appendix 2 (Tax Policy Measures by Types of Taxes) of the “Main Directions of the Budgetary, Tax, and Customs Tariff Policy for 2022 and the Planning Period of 2023 and 2024”, paragraph 5 of the subsection “Value Added Tax” is also devoted to the issue of changing the procedure for determining places of sale of works (services) for VAT purposes and voluntary registration for foreign suppliers using a VAT office, which states that a foreign supplier of works (services) will be able to pay VAT independently in the event of voluntary tax registration in the Russian Federation Federation. Thus, the relevance of the research topic was indicated in the Main Directions for two years in a row, in 2021 and 2022. The geopolitical changes taking place today only increase the relevance of this study, the purpose of which is to free from the formal barriers of the system of registration for VAT purposes of foreign companies providing electronic services to recipients in Russia, to attract as many foreign companies to taxation in the Russian Federation. The implementation of the results of this work can make the conditions for the work of foreign companies in Russia more attractive. The main tasks to be solved within the framework of the study are: to analyze the foreign experience of paying VAT by foreign companies with an emphasis on the voluntariness of registration and online interaction with tax authorities and; to analyze the current tax legislation of Russia in terms of paying VAT by foreign companies, including the issue of applying the institution of tax agents; prepare proposals for improving the tax legislation in Russia, including amendments to certain articles of Chapter 21 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation. The subject of the study is the procedure for indirect taxation of foreign companies in Russia using the VAT office. The method or methodology of research is a combination of general scientific and special methods of cognition, namely, system analysis, the method of analogy, the general logical method of generalization, comparative legal, structural, and functional analysis. The sources of information are research materials of Russian and foreign scientists, legislative bases, websites of tax authorities of the countries of the world, mass media, and other sources. The main applied result of the research is the answer to the question of the advisability or not of the introduction of voluntary registration of foreign suppliers using the VAT office in the implementation of activities in Russia (sales to Russian buyers), which is specified in the "Guidelines for the budget, tax, and customs tariff policy for 2021 and the planning period of 2022 and 2023" (Guidelines). In addition to the above main applied result, the applied results of the study will be proposals for improving the payment of VAT in Russia by foreign companies. The scientific novelty of the main applied result is due to the novelty of the question itself about the advisability of introducing voluntary registration within the framework of the Guidelines. The scientific novelty of other applied results is due to the analysis of the current tax legislation of Russia, and foreign experience, on the topic of the study for 2021, and 2022, initiatives in 2023. As a result of the analysis of foreign experience, the following conclusions were drawn in the world, voluntary registration for the purpose of paying VAT of foreign suppliers, and not always through personal accounts or special services similar to the VAT office on the websites of tax services. Voluntary registration is not limited to e-services, but also, for example, includes low-value goods. As a recommendation, it seems appropriate to allow voluntary registration for VAT purposes for foreign companies in Russia. In the future, this work can become a starting point for studying the issues of changing approaches to taxation, and administration of income of foreign companies in Russia, including direct taxation.

Abstract

The relevance: during the period 2000–2020 in the Russian Federation, there were serious changes in terms of taxation. An assessment of the tax burden on individuals is important in order to answer the question to which degree tax reforms are in line with the initially stated goals, primarily from the fairness criteria point of view. The consequences of these changes for both the budgetary system and the Russian population are still poorly understood, in particular, how changes in social contributions, VAT, and the introduction of various tax incentives and/or spending contributed to reducing income inequality. Such studies are needed both in terms of determining the extent to which various incentives are distorted by tax policy measures, and in terms of assessing the effectiveness of these measures. The object: taxation systems and features of tax administration in world practice and the Russian Federation. The subject of the study is distribution of the tax burden on taxpayers in the Russian Federation. The aim of the study is to assess the distribution of the tax burden by groups of taxpayers and types of taxes in the Russian Federation. When forming the work, such methods as the hypothetical-deductive method, grouping and comparison methods, analysis of international and Russian experience, econometric and statistical analysis, case methods were used. The study used data from the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, Rosstat and the Russian Monitoring of the Economic Situation and Health of the Population of the Higher School of Economics. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the assessment of the distribution of tax burdens of personal income tax, social contributions and VAT by individuals and households, as well as in assessing the degree of regressivity/progressivity of taxation using regression analysis. The result of the work was a report containing: 1. International experience in determining and assessing the tax burden. 2. Generalization of empirical and theoretical approaches to assessing the distribution of the tax burden. 3. Russian experience in terms of the main changes that determine the tax burden on taxpayers. 4. The results of the assessment of the tax burden by categories of taxpayers and various types of taxes. The results allowed us to conclude that when analyzing the tax burden of personal income tax and social contributions on the basis of RLMS data, the distribution of the share of tax payments in the payroll by net labor income is almost identical to the distribution by the total disposable income of an individual. It is important to note, however, that in both cases the share drops sharply when people employed in the informal sector are included in the analysis. For the officially employed, on average for the period under review, the share of tax payments in the payroll ranged from 26.9% to 30%, and for the full sample from 21.3% to 26.3%. When analyzing the distribution of the VAT tax burden, a weaker degree of regressivity was found compared to taxes on labor income. In the future, the authors plan to continue the study of the distribution of the tax burden on individuals in Russia and in the world.