Land taxation as a tool to ensure sustainable development of rural areas in the context of decentralization

Abstract

The article considers land taxation as one of the tools to ensure the sustainable development of rural areas in the context of decentralization. Included land tax and rent for land plots of state and communal property and a single tax for agricultural producers as land tax payments has been proposed. It was found that the land fee is the second-largest source of tax revenues to local budgets. It was revealed that during 2009–2020 there is a tendency to increase revenues from land fees to local budgets of Ukraine. Emphasis is placed on the fact that there is an increase in rent payments by legal entities and individuals in parallel with a decrease in its share in the payment for land, which is caused by an increase in land tax revenues during the analyzed period by 4.5 times. It was found that the largest amounts of revenues from land fees are payments from legal entities (86–88 % of the total revenues). It was found that the number of revenues from land tax and rent for land plots of state and communal property paid by individuals increased 4.5 times, and the number of revenues from similar taxes from legal entities increased 3.6 times. As a result of the study, attention is focused on the fact that since 2015 the payment for land has been transferred from the status of a national tax to a local one. It is proved that to tax the regulation of agricultural land use and promotes the development of agriculture and rural areas in 1998, a fixed agricultural tax was introduced. It was found that the number of receipts of the single tax paid by agricultural producers in 2015 increased 17 times compared to 2014. The sharp increase is caused by the introduction of the annual indexation of the tax base for agricultural enterprises, and a threefold increase in tax rates is justified. To achieve the goals of sustainable development of rural areas, it is proposed to carry out such measures as the application of increasing coefficients for irrational use of agricultural lands, provision of benefits for organic agricultural producers, implementation of the full inventory of agricultural lands, improvement of normative monetary valuation of land use for land and/or the single tax of the fourth group for the implementation of measures for the protection and reproduction of land resources, which will increase employment in rural areas, overcome poverty, develop social infrastructure, ensure the livelihood of rural residents, food, economic and environmental security, reduce destructive effects on the environment, protection and reproduction of natural resource potential.