The Impact of the Threat of Criminal Penalties for Tax Evasion on the Activities of Small Business in Russian Federation
- DOI
- 10.2991/ispcbc-19.2019.99How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- small enterprises; tax evasion; VAT; economic crimes; criminal prosecution; economic growth
- Abstract
The development of small business has long been declared as one of the priorities in the reform of Russian economy. It is expected that this will solve a number of economic problems, from providing the flexibility of the economy and job creation, to overcoming its natural resource dependence. At the same time, the problem of excessive criminal prosecution of small enterprises certainly plays a significant role in deterring its development, since criminal repression affects the basic most important interests of the person. With this in mind, the authorities have repeatedly made statements about the need to limit cases of criminal prosecution of entrepreneurs by the only cases when it is absolutely necessary. However, these declarations differed from reality for a long time and the number of cases of criminal prosecution under "entrepreneurial" articles only grew from year to year. In this study, the reasons for this situation and the motivations of public authorities are clarified. It is established that the main motive of the authorities is the desire to use the threat of criminal prosecution as the simplest and most effective means of improving the performance of their work at the costs of business representatives, even at the cost of their bankruptcy and termination of activities. A particular civil servant is interested only in the indicators of his work, for which he is accountable and not the aims of state policy in the economic sphere. Moreover, representatives of small enterprises are the easiest target here, because they do not have sufficient administrative and financial resources to take advantage of qualified legal and economic assistance. It is established that to reverse the situation and shift the focus from the criminal legal methods of influence towards financial here helped only a radical change in legislation associated with an increase in the minimum amount of arrears needed for the act to be recognized as a criminal one. This gives basis to assert that in the future only such radical methods will be effective to reduce criminal-law pressure on business. In all other cases, criminal-law methods of influence on business continue to be the most simple and effective and therefore the most attractive for the state officials.
- Copyright
- © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - A. Sevastyanov AU - E. Sevastyanova PY - 2019/08 DA - 2019/08 TI - The Impact of the Threat of Criminal Penalties for Tax Evasion on the Activities of Small Business in Russian Federation BT - Proceedings of the International Scientific-Practical Conference “Business Cooperation as a Resource of Sustainable Economic Development and Investment Attraction” (ISPCBC 2019) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 229 EP - 232 SN - 2352-5428 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/ispcbc-19.2019.99 DO - 10.2991/ispcbc-19.2019.99 ID - Sevastyanov2019/08 ER -