Study on the effects of the special tax regimes for small and medium-sized enterprises in the Russian Federation[Исследование Эффектов От Применения Специальных Налоговых Режимов И Преференций Для Субъектов Малого И Среднего Предпринимательства В Российской Федерации]

The development of small and medium-sized enterprises is one of the priorities in state policy. At the same time, crucial factor of small business activity is taxation. The need for a special approach to taxation of small enterprises in comparison with large ones is linked to the greater significance of fixed costs of compliance with tax legislation and a wide choice of formal and informal forms of business organization. The purpose of the study is to systematize modern theoretical and practical approaches to the taxation of small businesses and to assess the effects associated with special taxation regimes. A review of international experience in supporting small and medium-sized enterprises showed the following. Various forms of support are actively used in both developed and developing countries. At the same time, the set of support tools differs and depends on - the historically developed characteristics of SMEs, aspects of the development of the region, as well as the financial capabilities of the country. Distributional analysis an regression approach have revealed that the simplified taxation system in the Russian Federation creates so called "growth tax" for small and medium-sized enterprises, since there is a progressive scale of taxation with a gap, both in consumption (due to VAT exemption for taxpayers under the USN) and in profit of organizations (due to lower tax rates and the threshold for switching to the general taxation system). Raising the threshold more than twice in 2017 led to shifting poor incentives for revenue growth to a smaller number of larger companies. This doubled the losses in terms of percentage revenue growth of companies from 29 regions of the Russian Federation and increased total revenue losses from 2 billion rubles in 2015-2016 to 3 billion rubles in 2017-2018.