The Impact of Electronic Tax Services on the Tax Behavior of Economic Entities: The Case of the Russian Forestry Complex

The relevance of the study is due to the growing role of information technologies in government regulation processes in general, and in tax administration in particular. The purpose of the study is to determine the impact of electronic services provided by the Federal Tax Service of Russia on the tax behavior of businesses, using the Russian forest industry as a case study. Two hypotheses guide the analysis: (1) electronic tax services enhance compliance with tax legislation; (2) these services do not reduce the level of tax evasion in the behavior of micro, small and medium enterprises. The study is based on a representative sample of 4,300 micro, small and medium enterprises operating in logging, sawmilling and wholesale timber trade. The taxpayers' behavior in compliance with tax legislation was characterized by a study of the dynamics of tax revenues from micro, small and medium enterprises for the period 2017–2024. For the same period, the analysis of data on current tax and fee debt of the respondents of the sample was conducted, and judicial records concerning tax offenses by the sampled firms were studied. The tax behavior of businesses in tax evasion was assessed by the level of tax risk, defined as an aggregated indicator of violations of the values of the criteria of the concept of planning an on-site tax audit. The results of the study established a strong relationship between the use of tax services and an increase in the level of compliance with the legislation on taxes and fees, which confirms the first hypothesis. At the same time, the analysis of the dynamics of the level of tax risk of the respondents for each year of the study period showed the absence of an impact on it of the tax services system, which, thus, confirms the second hypothesis. The results will allow us to calculate more detailed effects of the influence of various electronic services of the tax service on the types of tax behavior depending on the functionality of the services, the speed of their updating, expansion, quality improvement, the industry affiliation of the activities of business entities and other parameters.