Certain issues of expenditure obligations in the Russian federation: legal aspects

The definition of the concept of “budget expenditures” fixed in the Russian legislation does not allow to accurately establish its essence and important features. A deeper understanding of the budget expenditures has both theoretical and practical importance. The article treats “expenditure obligation” as one of the essential elements of the activities of government bodies related to budget expenditures, which characterizes the basis of budget expenditures. The emphasis in the study is made on the consideration of laws and other regulatory legal acts as the basis of expenditure obligations, because Budget Code of the Russian Federation does not make possible to determine what clauses a law or other regulatory legal act should provide in order to create a new expenditure obligation. The article presents the examples of such a difficulty raised by insufficient legal regulation. In particular, there are issues in adoption of laws or other regulatory acts which provide for the budget expenditures taking proper account of the delimitation of powers between the Russian Federation, the subjects of the Russian Federation and municipalities. Issues of budget expenditures aimed to fund the powers transferred from another authority are also illustrated. Based on the results of the study, the article proposes a discussion on the requirements the laws and other regulatory legal acts providing for budget expenditures should meet. The author also suggests to discuss the necessity to legalize the de facto provisions for budget expenditures in regulatory legal acts of a higher level.