Methods of investigating taxation in today’s foreign literature

The present-day economic science uses various scientific instrumentarium, borrows research methods from other sciences. Methods of taxation investigation also undergo changes with the course of time. Considering that taxation in Russia before the 1990-s had no traditions of serious scientific analysis, many present-day methods of studying taxation have not been used by our scientists. It refers, first and foremost, to polls and selective investigations, as well as experimental methods. The purpose of the article is systemization of today’s directions and methods of taxation investigation. The article gives a review of a rather wide range of modern research studies in the field of taxation presented in the Englishlanguage literature. An effort is made to systemize and classify the studies in view of the issues under research and the methods used. It shows which way the taxation practice had an impact on changing the directions of research studies: from studying the nature of taxation to analysis of taxation systems. It considers the present-day approaches to investigating the taxation system: economic, administrative and politico-economic ones. The literature on taxation issues specifies two directions: the theory of taxation and practical knowledge of taxes and taxation. The article systemizes the directions of taxation studies listed in the classification of Journal of Economic Literature. It presents description of the methods used in taxation studies. A special attention is given to use of the methods that allow to investigate the taxation issues never studied before — the selective studies, polls and experiments.