Comparative Analysis of Tax Benefits in Territories of Priority Development and Special Economic Zones

The paper describes the model for comparison of taxation systems existing in the territories of advanced social and economic development (TAD) and in special economic zones (SEZ) of the “technology-innovation†and “industrial-production†type. The main elements of this model are an investment project (placed in various systems of tax benefits), an model of investor’ behavior that chooses the optimal time for financing the project, and scenarios of the tax system, taking into account tax privileges accepted in TAD and SEZ. As model calculations showed, the possibilities of all three systems in terms of attracting investors (waiting time for project financing) are approximately the same, but the investor will still come in TAD a little faster than in the SEZ, and with the growing uncertainty of the future profit from the project this difference will increase. From the point of view of federal and regional budgets (i.e. the expected tax revenues from the implemented project) does not exist one system that would be better than the other two for all considered investment projects. The tax system in TAD will be the best in this respect for projects with a low average growth rate of added value and low volatility. The benefits of TAD will also be the best (for the regional budget) for projects with higher both average growth rates of added value and a share of wages in value added. In other cases, the best benefit system is in SEZ of the industrial-production type for the federal budget, and of the technology-innovation type for the regional budget.