Combating Tax Avoidance in Russia: Historical Perspective and Current Trends

The development of anti-avoidance techniques in Russia has historically had some difficulties. The nascent development of anti-avoidance techniques in the pre-revolutionary period was actually suspended by the tax policy of the Soviet Government. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia faced significant socio-economic transformations that required a reform of the taxation system. The beginning of the XXI century in Russia was characterized by the formation of a modern tax system and intensification of the search for new effective anti-avoidance techniques. In the 1990s, the problem of tax avoidance became extremely acute on the Russian tax policy agenda. Due to the absence of the developed tax legislation and unstable federal government, tax avoidance threatened the economic security of the state and could even have undermined its social and economic development due to budget losses. According to various estimates, as a result of massive tax avoidance in the 1990s, Russia annually lost approximately 30% of the payments that were due. Over the past decade, the mechanism for combating tax avoidance in Russia has been remarkably improved. Currently, the Russian tax authorities are making significant progress in applying various anti-avoidance techniques. The two semantic parts of this article reveal the Russian efforts in the formation of effective anti-avoidance techniques. The first part of the article is devoted to the Russian approach to the definition of `tax avoidance' and outlines the main stages of the development of anti-avoidance techniques. The second part of the article deals with the major financial techniques successfully used in Russia, including judicial, statutory, tax treaties, organizational, and other means for countering tax avoidance.