Fiscal foresighting: analysis of researches

Abstract

In the context of the rapid technology development and globalization transformations, predicting changes in the economy, which affect fiscal system, is extremely relevant. Therefore, fiscal foresight as a mean of predicting a fiscal policy development in the long run is becoming an integral part of tax policy and economic development elaboration in many countries of the world. The objective of the paper is to analyse theoretical aspects of fiscal foresight, as well as foreign and national experience in fiscal foresights’ preparation to identify long-term factors and indicators that will have a significant impact (both positive and negative) on a fiscal system in a distant future. It was established that fiscal foresighting is a process of collecting data on the future to assess long-term prospects for the stability of tax revenues and budget expenditures in the face of changes in macroeconomic and other factors affecting the national economy. The main components of fiscal foresighting are identifying and monitoring trends, scanning and monitoring the time horizon, identifying risks and problems, and developing scenarios. Analysis of foreign fiscal foresights has shown that they become the basis for the development of shorter-term plans for the advance of fiscal systems, pointing out the main directions of fiscal policy, risks and barriers to achieving the goals. However, conducting an interstate analysis of a fiscal foresight remains problematic. This is due to the fact, that there is no single methodology for preparing fiscal foresights, countries choose different research horizons and update periods. It was defined that the basis for the goal-setting of national fiscal foresights was taken: reducing the level of income and welfare inequality, fighting against tax evasion, the transition to a "green" economy, promoting the digital development, stabilizing the socio-demographic condition with an unambiguous conclusion about the need to make adjustments to a national tax system. Countries have chosen as the main long-term fiscal policy actions: "rebalancing" the tax structure from direct taxes on labour and capital to indirect taxes on consumption and taxes on property and resource use; the transition from models based on ownership/sales to models based on the use of assets/goods/services; the introduction of new taxes, changes in rates, etc., the use of digital technologies in the tax payment and administration processes. The analysis of the socio-economic situation in Ukraine was carried out in order to identify factors that are critical in the development of the main vectors for the advance of the country's fiscal system in the future. These are recognized as: demographic and social changes, "depletion" of demand in the face of increased competition and the dependence of the export-oriented economy on the international environment and turbulence in the international economy, income inequality, digitalization, tax evasion, environmental degradation. Based on the results of the analysis of the "National Economic Strategy for the Period up to 2030", it was established that the actions indicated in the Strategy can become the initial data for the development of the first national fiscal foresight as a basis for assessing the long-term sustainability of the current fiscal system , identifying opportunities and risks of transformations of the fiscal policy of Ukraine under the influence of megatrends and intrastate changes associated with the peculiarities of the country's socio-economic development.