Dialectics of traps

Minister of Taxes and Duties Gennady Ivanovich Bukaev - a true Russian intellectual - likes to repeat that in this world only death and taxes are inevitable. Despite the fact that Gennady Ivanovich refers to some American, the statement is clearly Orthodox-statist, unobtrusively conveying to the masses the idea of ​​​​the existence of a cause-and-effect relationship between these truly unpleasant phenomena. Regular payment of taxes, perhaps, really imitates the sacred cycle of “death - renewal - rebirth”. In our unspiritual times, in what other way can we approach the highest than through the regular rejection of part of our wealth? It is sad, however, that the very idea of ​​paying taxes does not enjoy support in large sections of modern Russian society, and hostility to the new type of tithe is shared even by some otherwise quite decent people.

Take, for example, some small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. Earning their daily bread through hard work, they, not at all imbued with the spirit of humility, would like to leave the maximum possible part of the spoils for their personal use, minimizing their contribution to the general treasury as much as possible. I am sure that internally they themselves feel the deep depravity of avoiding bringing part of the results of their labors “on stream.” Otherwise, how can these by definition smart people give such insignificant arguments for their aspiration?

Thus, some of them argue that small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of a modern dynamically developing market economy. Perhaps, somewhere small business is man’s friend, but our man’s friend is big business. In modern Russian conditions, it is large and super-large economic structures that produce up to 70 percent of the gross domestic product. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of budget revenues are generated from various types of tax revenues (including customs payments) from large businesses. Thus, at present, small and medium-sized businesses, in general, cannot lay claim to anything more than the role of a mechanism for adapting part of the population to market conditions of existence. Of course, such an educational sphere of activity, by definition, should, in theory, be taxed at lenient rates (what kind of money should be taken from students?) - if not for the existence of truly symbiotic relationships between large and small economic agents. It is widely known that large companies prefer to evade taxes (i.e., excuse me, optimize) using schemes that necessarily include small and medium-sized enterprises. For example, transfer pricing requires the presence in the extended structure of a large company of a small trader through whom financial and material flows pass. Another, most banal optimization scheme is fly-by-night companies.

Nevertheless, the problem of small and medium-sized businesses is understandable and explainable if we go beyond the analytical scheme “ONE state - ONE business”.

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Even in the constitution (an extremely general, “framework” law), the “state” is divided into several “branches” - federal executive, legislative and judicial authorities, as well as regional and municipal authorities. Despite the fact that the scope of the fiscal falls under the competence of the federal authorities, the rest also take an active part in the process of tax withdrawals. Accordingly, different levels of the tax collection system are also influenced by the federal, regional and municipal authorities, respectively. Since by the end of the 90s it became clear that different authorities have different goals and can influence the activities of tax authorities at the corresponding level, since the beginning of 2001 the federal authorities have been implementing a strategy to unify tax policy. However, the problem remains - the feds are generally not interested in small and medium-sized businesses as a source of tax revenue, but as a possible channel for avoiding taxation of large companies - it raises serious suspicions. Since the share of federal taxes in consolidated budget revenues has increased significantly (approaching 70 percent), the guidelines of the federal authorities are beginning to dominate overall fiscal policy.

The essence of fiscal policy is simple - the federal government needs money, and that comes first. The level of withdrawal is set by the tasks that the federal government sets for itself, and is based on the explicit consensus of people's representatives (deputies of the State Duma and members of the Federation Council) and the implicit consensus of society.

The spending policy of the federal authorities is generally clear - there are fixed obligations to repay external debt, there are social obligations to increase real wages for public sector workers (primarily military personnel), there is a desire to rearm and reform the army, to increase spending on law enforcement and law enforcement systems. These obligations are very diverse, but they all seem justified: debts must be paid (at least from sin); The military and public sector employees have already been promised an increase in wages so many times that it is simply indecent to delay it; Indeed, without reform and armament, the army turns into an internal threat (instead of being a guarantor of security). Well, business is primarily interested in reforming the law enforcement and enforcement systems (in any case, until the tax police began to visit the apartments of ordinary citizens, and corrupt courts began to resolve issues of bankruptcy of an annoying spouse). Each individual area of ​​spending is supported by mass social groups, articulated by the political elites that serve them, and utilized by individual groups of the business community.

This support is the root of the problem. It is obvious that reasonable (not costly) reforms in Russia can be carried out by reforming industries and institutions that either lie on the periphery of the consciousness of mass groups, or are indifferent to the overwhelming majority of the active population. Public support plays the role of a kind of pied piper - as soon as it becomes obvious, the authorities go crazy, and they begin to engage in “political optimization” as if spellbound.

Of course, there is no single society in Russia either, but it is difficult to draw a clear line between the aspirations of the “old Russians” and the entrepreneurial class itself. The new history of Russia - both political and economic - shows that this is difficult to do. In fact, there is still no new class of “entrepreneurs - non-Soviet people”. Continuing to be, if not integrated into the system of the “class of Soviet-post-Soviet people,” then at least a group associated with it, entrepreneurs demonstrate almost the full range of behavioral reactions of a Soviet person.

In general, such a social structure is quite balanced - but under certain conditions. These conditions basically boil down to the presence of a post-Soviet type of consensus: “we pretend that we recognize you as authorities, and you pretend that you carry out the functions of power.” Within the framework of such a consensus, the payment of taxes is generally optional, just as the financial fulfillment of the state’s obligations to citizens and individual social groups is not necessary (in a broad sense) (partial financing of obligations is provided through customs duties and emissions).

There are different assessments of how stable the overall socio-economic structure of the Russian Federation was in 1992-99, but it is undeniable that by the end of the 90s the pressure of various social groups (including, not least, entrepreneurs) became apparent. aimed at changing the existing consensus. The new consensus is based on the partial coincidence of the goals of the authorities and a wide range of social groups and can be roughly formulated as follows: “you are gradually becoming the authorities, and we are gradually recognizing you as such.” Naturally, the tax issue of the agreement between the post-Soviet groups became the core of a new system of relations - “by carrying out the reforms we need, you rationalize taxation, and we pay reasonable taxes.” However, it quickly became clear that the authorities and the business community differ in their interpretation of the spirit and letter of such an agreement: the authorities believe that it is more about the “ultimate goal of what we are doing now” (i.e., measures taken to achieve the desired state of affairs , may well go beyond the consensus), while businessmen demand to act fairly right now, without any transition periods or adaptations.

We can say that there is reason for the business community's dissatisfaction. Indeed, becoming “real”, the Russian authorities are forced, willy-nilly, to at least imitate the actions of the authorities of a normal regular state, such as: gradually abolish various kinds of thieves’ benefits and tax preferences, thereby placing an additional fiscal burden on a fairly large group Russian economic agents. But let us note that expanding the circle of actually taxable economic agents does not lead to a significant reduction in the tax burden for those who paid taxes before, since, on the one hand, federal budget expenses also increase, and on the other, no one has ever paid taxes in full, and Now you have to pay almost in full (that is, not everything accrued yet, but obviously more than before).

This, in fact, is the trap into which the state that advocates under the motto “liberal economy and managed democracy” falls. The authorities really planned liberal economic reforms and are actually implementing them. It is clear that any reforms have their price. In a managed democracy, the distribution of reform costs between various social groups is determined mainly by the authorities themselves (or, if you prefer, by the bureaucracy, both political and economic). If universal suffrage is preserved, the authorities seek to minimize the burden on mass groups that are susceptible to propaganda indoctrination. It's clear. However, in modern Russian conditions, the technology of reform itself increases the cost of reform, so the tax burden, by definition, cannot be reduced, but can only be restructured.

Actually, the authorities’ proposal to the business community sounds like “Let’s not reduce your tax burden, but rather optimize it, well, we’ll replace the most unpleasant taxes with ones that are not yet known to you, and if something is wrong, then we are open to dialogue, because on the basic We have already reached agreement on the principles of reform; in general, there is nothing to discuss.” It sounds, of course, much more attractive than simply “you have to share.” That's it for the purchase.

As a result, the business community was divided into several groups. The most numerous compensates for dissatisfaction with increasing costs with two theses:

- But order and the economy are growing (hence, gross income is increasing this way or that, why bother blathering then);

The greatness of a state is more important than a few pennies (hence, the more taxes we pay, the sooner we will rub the noses of the arrogant Americans, even at cross-country skiing).

The less numerous - mainly represented by large and super-large businesses - are generally indifferent to the current actions of the authorities, since the goal is benefits on a global scale, they focus their activity on this and understand that exemplary behavior in relation to national tax services is, if not the most important thing , then is not the last factor in joining the club of transnational companies (it is unnecessary to add that most of these businesses benefited greatly from the previous period of a weak state, and therefore can regard the current increase in the tax burden as a completely humane payment for the use of preferences in the past).

And only a very small group is trying to offer (or even impose on the authorities under various pretexts) their original options for optimizing the tax burden - from replacing all taxes with fees for subsoil to coming up with new tax structures to replace the existing ones. Which - naturally - does not arouse enthusiasm among fiscal officials for reasons both objective and subjective. Indeed, the budget structure itself is such that unsuccessful fiscal experiments can significantly increase the risks of fulfilling budget obligations, and the authorities simply cannot do this in a managed electoral democracy. Subjectively, the authorities are not ready - even in the case of low potential risks to budget sustainability - to undertake radical tax innovations, since they believe that such actions could unfocus their efforts on ongoing reform. That is, “let’s first see how the mechanism that we are now creating will work, and then we will think about how to change it.”

Does this mean that any discussion about tax innovation is pointless? Not at all. We must, however, be aware that we have quite a lot of time allotted for these discussions, since the implementation of the proposals made into legislative norms will be possible only at the next stage of reforming the Russian economic system - in five to eight years. Actually, we have such a cycle of tax innovations - a flat scale of income tax as an idea was first voiced, if my memory serves me correctly, in 1996.

In the event of a truly intense election campaign (both Duma and presidential), the concepts of tax innovations will be in demand, at a minimum, for use in election propaganda (and the bolder the project, the more suitable it is for “selling”). The main thing is that after the current stage of reform and the upcoming season of political PR, there remains the human and intellectual potential necessary for the true liberalization of the state’s fiscal system .