This is already written so much that I will not get into the details of the actual innovation, it will be a matter of their real meaning. And to understand it, you need to start to remember who, how and why created this tax system.This process began at the very beginning of 90's under the leadership of liberal reformers and consisted of two parts. Firstly, it was necessary to change the tax system so that taxes could be collected at all (and after the destruction of the Soviet system there were serious problems with this), and secondly, to meet the demands of the political "curators" of our reformers represented by international financial organizations, formulated in the so-called "Washington Consensus".
The meaning of this document was that the countries that were part of the Soviet system of division of labor should not be competitors of the countries of the “western” system of division of labor. And therefore - all enterprises that are built into the "eastern" system of division of labor should be destroyed, and new ones should be built, in which cheap labor creates cheap elements for production in "civilized" countries. We see the essence of these reforms in Bulgaria (which, even in the 70s, produced industrial products more than Turkey!), The Baltic countries, and other countries of Eastern Europe (a partial but temporary exception - Poland).
One of the main elements of the system that led to a similar result is the tax system. The meaning of which is that it should support speculative operations as much as possible (for example, selling plants for scrap and subsequent sale of land under them) and make high-tech production unprofitable. The simplest way to achieve this result (in the tax system, there are other components, for example, the “right” monetary policy) is the introduction of a high value-added tax.
This option was implemented in Russia. At the same time, of course, no one said that the goal of the liberal reform-reform tax reform is to destroy the Soviet industry and replant the Russian economy on the “oil needle”. Well, more precisely, it was not officially stated. The argument was that VAT could be administered very easily (that is, collected). Well, an additional tacit argument was that the VAT refund for exporters can be made far from full (and, conversely, to “return” it to those who have not exported anything, but they are close to specific officials of the Ministry of Finance).
Since then, the tax system has become very complicated; at least, we learned how to administer taxes, although due to their extremely high level, we still have a very large proportion of the “gray” economy (that is, legal activity carried out without full payment of taxes). At the same time, during the period of economic growth, tax collection and the share of the “white” economy is growing, and during recessions (as it is now) it is declining. But at the same time, there is another problem - inter-budgetary relations, since practically all money is taken from the regions and then redistributed by the federal center on the basis of political, not economic, considerations. Note that this circumstance regularly becomes a factor in the conflict between the presidential administration (which is responsible for the political climate in the regions) and the government (which has its own considerations on the appropriateness and "correctness" of the policies of specific leaders of specific regions).
After the crisis began in the 2008 year (albeit with a short break in 2009 – 2011), the liberal government decided to use it to meet the requirements of the IMF. In particular - to raise taxes on the real sector and on small business. At the same time, the government generally gives a significant part of budget revenues to the support of the “Western” economy, and all attempts to force him to abandon this evil practice have come to nothing.
As a result, instead of reducing the tax pressure on the real sector (which would stimulate import substitution and dramatically increase the number of enterprises paying taxes), send part of the funds withdrawn from the economy to the regions so that they can implement their social programs, thereby increasing the internal consumption in the country, to stimulate the creation of new industries in the regions - the government did the opposite. It increased taxes on small business and in fact began to blackmail regional authorities in order to impose a sales tax. From the economic point of view, the sales tax is no different from VAT, and its introduction is equivalent to an increase in the already high VAT (that is, a new restriction of the high-tech manufacturing sphere), but the government promises the regions that the money raised from this tax will go to social programs in the regions.
In other words, the essence of this tax proposal is to force the regions to close their still operating enterprises and pay social benefits (including the new unemployed) at the expense of the wild load on those enterprises that are still able to work. That is, mainly in the commodity sector (remember what the purpose of the Washington Consensus was).
If you add the burden on citizens (an increase in OSAGO payments and a waiver of universal free medical insurance), you get a very nice picture. If we recall the famous apocryphal statement (attributed to Margaret Thatcher) about the fact that 15 should live in Russia for millions of people serving the “pipe” (se non è vero, è ben trovato), it turns out that this thesis is implemented by our government, because the list of people receiving free insurance is going to throw out just the mothers who raise children ... The audience in ecstasy breaks the chairs!
At the same time, any macroeconomist (and any man in the street who played some kind of “civilization” computer game like “SIM-city”) knows that raising taxes during a recession leads to an acceleration of this decline. And given the plan to "liquidate" Putin, who leads the United States today and whose meaning is in stimulating his "Maidan" in Russia against the background of the fall in the standard of living of the population, inevitable this fall, the government’s policy begins to play with new colors.
It turns out that the main result that they (the government) will achieve is a wild irritation of the entrepreneurial class and the ordinary man in the street (who normally don’t really love each other) to all political power, from Putin to regional governors, within which the government will deny from his guilt and explain that it wanted the best, but circumstances like ... “bloody gebni”, “totalitarian dictator”, “nourished Communist Party of the Soviet Union”, add to taste the lack.
Actually, I absolutely did not intend to write a political pamphlet, I wanted to limit myself to a bare economy. But since I usually follow logic, she led me to politics. And if earlier it was possible to say that in our country there are just a few political clans, today it is clear that one of them (the liberal reformers who control the financial and economic policy in the country) clearly does not play to gain power in the country , and on its liquidation.
Maybe someone will not agree with this logic - then be so kind as to present arguments.