Duma official thinks more tax revenues can go to regional budgets

State Duma Budget Committee Deputy Chairman Vitaly Shuba considers it possible to extend the list of taxes revenues from which can be transferred to regions of Russia. The deputy voiced this opinion in an interview with RBC, commenting on the initiative by the commission for the division of authority between governments at different levels, headed by Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the Russian President's administration. This commission has worked out a number of bills intended to divide the authority between the governments at the federal, regional and municipal levels. The bills provide for reassigning some responsibilities from the central government to the regional and municipal authorities. Additional tax revenues are to be reassigned to regions so as to provide financial support for this move.

Shuba remarked that a legislative mechanism for such redistribution had already been specified: the revenues from the profit tax and the property tax will be distributed between the governments at the above-mentioned three levels. However, Kozak's proposals deal not with the distribution mechanism but with increasing of the volume of taxable funds for the regional and municipal governments, the deputy underlined. In his opinion, the main difficulty is the difference between the potential of different regions for receiving tax revenues. This difference has to be reduced, and the tax revenues to be reassigned to the regions or redistributed in accordance with the new system should be thoroughly analyzed, Shuba believes. In general, such taxes can include duties on natural resources, the water tax, the forest tax, the tax on mineral resources, as well as the individual income tax.