TAX SECURITY AS A FACTOR OF INCREASING THE FISCAL EFFI-CIENCY OF THE TAX SYSTEM OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The article characterizes the system of tax security of the state, assesses threats, risks and indicators for determining its condition. The separate security features are monitoring threats, assessing the vulnerability of the tax system to these threats, analysis of tax security indicators of the state, including tax revenues of the Consolidated Budg-et of Ukraine for 2016-2020, fiscal importance of taxes in the structure of budget revenues and in GDP, tax evasion and the shadow economy level, the level of implementation of the revenue plan, the efficiency of administration and the effectiveness of tax control as well as the workload of the state tax service employees. Assessment of the condition of tax security in Ukraine revealed the tax burden increase, primarily due to the growing tax burden on labor and corporate profits. The increase in expenditures on the maintenance of fiscal authorities and taxes administration does not vary with the increase in the amount of tax debt and the situation in the field of tax evasion. The low efficiency of tax admin-istration is evidenced by the growth of tax debt and a significant level of bad tax debts write-off. Measures taken by the State Fiscal Service and the State Tax Service to repay and prevent the growth of tax debt proved to be ineffective. The level of collection of taxes accrued on the results of control-verification activities is very low and varies between 20-30%. The biggest schemes of tax abuse in 2020 were: wages "in envelopes", violations of customs regulations, smug-gling and corruption at the state border. The additional challenges posed by the global Covid-19 pandemic are exacer-bating tax security. This applies in particular to the stability and adequacy of tax revenues to the budgets of different levels, as well as the vulnerability of taxpayers to the new quarantine conditions. The negative impact on the condition of tax security is complemented by delays in the elimination of inefficient tax police, low investigatability of tax crimes, staff turbulence in fiscal authorities as well as overdue introduction of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine. To strengthen the tax security of the state, it is necessary to complete the institutional reform of the customs service, in-crease the efficiency and effectiveness of tax control, strengthen the responsibility of taxpayers for tax evasion.