Natural Resources Payments as a Kind of Budgetary Revenues

Abstract

The paper examines the problems of financial and legal regulation of payments for the use of natural resources. The author draws attention to the complexity and heterogeneity of the system of natural resources payments including a number of different types of payments ranging from taxes (a tax on mineral extraction, a water tax, a land tax) to rent payments (the rent for use of the land, the rent for the use of forests). According to the author of the article, such diversity is difficult to explain, since it is not clear why a law-maker chooses a particular form, because a particular single object of taxation, namely - natural resources, is being dealt with. In addition, establishing and levying natural resources payments derives from the principle of payment for the use of natural resources. Also, the analysis of current legislation in the field of payments for the use of natural resources carried out in the paper shows that when calculating natural resources payments irrespective of their title and legal construct identical approaches are applied. It turns out that the state through appropriate bodies in the relations that arise over natural resources can act as a public entity laying down rules for granting the use of natural resources, levying taxes and as an equal entity in civil legal relations, which raises many questions. It is difficult to explain the reasons why the state granting the use of natural resources resorts to either public law or private law constructions. We cannot accept regulation when essentially homogeneous payments are assigned to the budget as either taxes or non-tax payments. The analysis revealed two approaches to the definition of the legal nature of natural resources payments: a civil law approach and a public law approach. Criticizing the possibility of applying civil law regulation to the relations that are public according to their legal nature, the author proves the financial and legal status of the payments. The research carried out in this paper leads to well-grounded conclusions concerning the need for applying a uniform public law regulation with regard to natural resources payments that, according to the author of the article, are of a mandatory nature, collecting of such payments for the budget is associated with the payers' performance of activities in the field of natural resources management that is associated with using the budget in the sphere of natural resources, as well as denial of civil law regulation of forestry and land payments because it contradicts to their public law nature and leads to budget losses due to the impossibility of applying the mechanism of coercion.