Formation of Financial Self-Sufficiency for Local Budgets in Ukraine: Problems and Prospects of Increasing the Revenue Base

Abstract

The guarantee for stable development of the local community's well-being creates conditions to ensure the financial self-sufficiency for local budgets. Today it is urgent to improve the theoretical and practical approaches to forming the local budget revenue to ensure the necessary financial self-sufficiency level for local budgets. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate the level of financial self-sufficiency for local budgets in Ukraine in 1998−2019 by analyzing the revenue side of these budgets. The research used methods of economic, systemic, and structural dynamic analysis. The paper compares different approaches to defining the concept of “financial self-sufficiency for local budgets”. It is determined that the community's success depends on the level of its financial self-sufficiency, which is possible only when the community has financial resources fully to implement local budgets in terms of expenditures. Structural and dynamic analysis of the local budget revenue in Ukraine for 1998-2019 is carried out to assess the level of financial self-sufficiency for local budgets in Ukraine as a whole. The study results indicate the state measures correctness in the reforming of the local taxation system in 2010 and budget decentralization in 2015. However, these measures must be fully implemented and systemic. Conclusions: the composition and structure of the revenues of the local budgets are continually changing, due to the constant changes in the tax system of Ukraine and the state’s efforts to solve the problem of generating local budget revenues, not due to the development of local taxation, but via official transfers. In such conditions, the self-sufficiency of local budgets does not receive the appropriate level. Local budgets are formed on the principle of minimum execution. However, the local taxation system development and the significant increase in tax revenues from local taxes since 2015 allow us to make optimistic forecasts for the growth of the financial self-sufficiency level for local budgets in the future. Keywords: self-sufficiency, community, budget, taxes.