Approaches to Determining the Law of a Constituent Entity of the Russian Federation That Establishes Regional Tax Exemptions: The Experience of the Siberian Federal District

Abstract

The article notes that when the state authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation exercise the powers to establish tax exemptions for regional taxes they are significantly limited by the provisions of federal legislation. The Tax Code of the Russian Federation establishes an exhaustive list of powers of regional authorities, but in terms of exemptions for regional taxes, it provides the constituent entities of the Russian Federation with the opportunity to determine independently the list of taxpayers and the amount of exemptions. At the same time, the form of the legal act is predetermined (the law of the subject of the Russian Federation), but the region has a choice of their number and subject of legal regulation. A comparative analysis showed that the constituent entities of the Russian Federation included in the Siberian Federal District use different approaches. In most of them, exemptions are established in several laws, each of which is dedicated to a separate regional tax. At the same time, there is an example of the establishment of tax exemptions by a single tax law. There are also examples of the introduction of additional tax exemptions for certain categories of taxpayers by independent regional laws, along with general tax exemptions established by the law on a specific tax. The author concludes that all indicated approaches do not contradict federal tax legislation. It is noted that earlier in the regions there was a practice of regulating the procedure for making a decision on the introduction of tax exemptions by separate laws, but today this issue is being resolved by assessing their effectiveness and is regulated at the by-law level, which does not contradict the procedure for establishing and introducing tax exemptions. Finally, it was concluded that a meaningful analysis of various approaches to establishing tax exemptions in the regions included in the Siberian Federal District did not reveal differences in the issue of internal systematization of tax exemptions, since they are set separately for each tax. However, in some regions there has been a tendency to systematize tax exemptions by categories of taxpayers. The use of various approaches is due to the goals of regional legal regulation and does not exclude further systematization of tax exemptions.