On certain peculiarities of implementation of tax on professional income

Abstract

This article explores the experiment on the establishment of special tax regime – “tax on professional income” in the practice of administering individual entrepreneurial activity and unreported employment. The author determines the uncertainty of the legal status of the self-employed citizens as a new category of taxpayers; outlines the problem of unreported employment as one of the prerequisites for conducting the experiment; as well as characterizes the peculiarities of different categories of self-employed citizens. Special attention is given to the assessment of factors of a significant increase in taxpayers in the category of tax on professional over a short period of the conducing the experiment. The article reviews certain controversial issues of the practice of implementation of experimental tax regime and the main reasons for its attractiveness for the taxpayers. The research employs the methods of analysis and synthesis, description, comparison, analogy, statistical data analysis. The author examines the hypotheses on the factors of substantial increase in the number of taxpayers in the category of tax on professional income, which include the expansion of the territory for the experiment, mass scale transition of taxpayers from other special tax regimes, use of tax in professional income for tax optimization purposes. The statistical analysis of tax reporting and review of the expert opinions allowed the author to conclude on the relevance of the special tax regime – “professional income tax”, its potential application as a method for legalization of income of self-employed citizens, as well as the need for interim assessment of the results and the fiscal effect of the conducted experiment.