One of the main problems of improving the tax system of the Russian Federation is the development of the
government policy and ensuring its efficiency in the mechanism of provision and implementation of tax relieves.
The uncontrolled growth of tax relieves results, on the one hand, in excessive differentiation and prevention of
creating "identical" conditions, and, on the other hand, opens the tax loopholes, which in turn increases the
pressure on the law-abiding taxpayers. Such conditions on top of the economic impact in the form of the tax base
reduction also result in the rise of the opinion in the society that there is a too high level of taxation.
In the tax system, according to the Ministry of Finance, there are about 200 different kinds of relieves and
preferences, which tend to increase in recent years. This increases not only the number of relieves provided, but
also their total amount (Panskov, 2012). For example, provision of various kinds of preferences for VAT resulted
in the 21.7% growth of the shortfall in federal budget revenues in 2013 compared to 2012, with the amount of
the shortfall equal to 1,834.6 billion rubles, while VAT revenues in the budget increased by just 12.9%. In the
Republic of Dagestan, tax deductions for VAT in 2013 increased by 23.9% compared with 2012. The VAT
subject to recover from the budget according to tax returns increased 1.9 times, where the VAT calculated for
payment to the budget grew by just 9.0% (Musaeva, 2014). Thus, there is anticipating growth of budget losses
from the provision of various kinds of preferences if compared to the amounts of the VAT revenues.
As a result of provision of various kinds of relieves, the state does not receive by various estimations between 45%
and 55% of all tax payments administered by the Federal Tax Service of Russia. Under these circumstances,
the search of a reasonable balance of tax relieves and the need to improve their efficiency continue to be the
pressing issues. The priority for improvement of the tax system is the elimination of the relieves, which are not
efficient in socioeconomic terms, but at the same time provide significant advantages to certain taxpayers as well
as opportunities for tax evasion. However, refusal from relieves, as well as the process of introduction of new
relieves should be accompanied by their preliminary examination of their use and feasibility. Refusing from tax
relieves without any analysis of the causes of their poor efficiency, the state loses leverage over the economy and
the social policy, and narrows its capabilities to the framework of the current, mainly fiscal tasks to the detriment
of the strategy of the socioeconomic growth.