The impact of tax evasion in tax behavior of forestry complex enterprises on the development of their property and technical potential

Abstract

The basis for the functioning of any manufacturing enterprise is a property complex, consisting mainly of movable and immovable property as an object of transport tax and corporate property tax. The expansion of this complex and the efficient use of property contributes to the successful development of the enterprise and an increase in tax revenues from property tax to the budget system of the Russian Federation. The article studies the property and technical potential of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises engaged in entrepreneurial activities in the field of logging, sawing and planing of wood, wholesale trade in timber, and also establishes the relationship between tax evasion behavior and the efficiency of the use of property assets by forestry enterprises. A representative sample of 4,134 enterprises was formed for the study. From the total set of economic entities engaged in entrepreneurial activities in the branches of the timber industry complex of Russia, only respondents registered before 01 January 2017 were selected. The level of tax risk for each enterprise of the representative sample for the period 2017-2020 is defined as a violation of the normative value of the tax burden criterion. The return on assets is taken as an indicator that characterizes the efficiency of the use of assets and the efficiency of the enterprise as a whole. Indicators of return on assets and tax burden are set in accordance with the provisions of the Concept for Planning Field Tax Audits. Statistical methods (correlation-regression analysis) were used to establish the relationship between the return on assets and the level of tax risk of forestry enterprises. In our research, we proceed from the assumption that the propensity of an enterprise to avoid paying taxes in tax behavior is the main factor that negatively affects the development of its potential and therefore the volume of tax payments transferred to the budget system of the Russian Federation. We determined and analyzed the values of indicators of capital-labor ratio, capital productivity and capital intensity according to the activities of enterprises of the representative sample; established the relationship between the inefficient use by medium, small, micro-enterprises of the forestry complex of their assets and tax evasion in the tax behavior of these enterprises. To solve the problems of tax evasion in order to further increase the property and technical potential of the enterprises of the forestry sector, the main directions of development are proposed, and the optimal of the proposed directions are determined by the method of game theory (games with nature). The Bayes criterion was used to determine the optimal strategy.