Increasing the transparency of the interaction between tax authorities and taxpayers

Abstract

Subject. The client-oriented service is one of the priorities tax authorities pursue today. The client-oriented service implies partnership and mutual responsibility. Taxpayers will timely perform their tax obligations, prevent indeliberate errors, while tax authorities contribute to a higher confidence of taxpayers. Therefore, the interaction of tax authorities and taxpayers become a very important issue. Objectives. I herein evaluate the importance of tax authorities as a servicing institution, modern automated tax control systems, data processing centers to create and use total available data. Methods. The article analyzes how tax authorities may interact with taxpayers, unfolds respective issues and suggests how the issues should be resolved. Results. I detected some difficulties in the interaction of tax authorities and taxpayers, such as the formalistic attitude to taxpayers’ inquiries, taxpayers’ dissatisfaction with controlling procedures of tax authorities, disputable questions about taxation. Conclusions and Relevance. I suggest paying greater attention to communications, clarifications and methodological aspects in order to enhance the financial security of entities. Tax authorities should better describe legislative breaches and suggest how the breaches should be eliminated. Tax authorities should communicate with taxpayers more specifically by expanding functions of data processing centers of the Russian Tax Service. The findings can be useful for the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Federal Tax Service for tax audits and communications with taxpayers.