Release:
2020, Vol. 6. № 1 (21)About the author:
Dmitry Yu. Fedotov, Dr. Sci. (Econ.), Associate Professor, Professor, Department of International Relations and Customs, Baikal State University (Irkutsk); fdy@inbox.ru, ORCID: 0000-0001-9908-802XAbstract:
This article examines the degree of influence of the tax burden on the formation of the shadow economy in Russia in the context of types of economic activity. The perspectives of various authors were taken into consideration when discussing that taxes have the greatest impact on the desire of taxpayers to “go into the shadows”. The author has studied various methods of measuring the value of the shadow economy used in the contemporary research. He presents the analysis of scales of shadow economy of Russia in 2011-2017 with application of various methods. Using the method measuring the share of economic operations not observed by direct statistical methods, the author has analyzed the value of the shadow economy in the sectors of the Russian economy.
The results prove that the highest level of the shadow economy is observed in the sphere of real estate transactions, in agriculture, and in construction. The lowest level of the shadow economy was revealed in the financial sector, extractive industries, and electric power industry. The analysis of sectoral differences in the tax burden in Russia has uncovered the existence of an inverse relationship between the size of the tax burden and the scale of the shadow economy: in those industries, where a low tax burden is detected, there is usually a high share of the shadow economy.
The obtained results allow confirming the originally proposed hypothesis that the high tax burden is not the leading factor provoking business to “go into the shadows” in order to avoid paying taxes.
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