Legal Regulation of Transport Tax in the Russian Federation

This master's thesis is aimed at identifying features of the legal regulation of transport taxation in the Russian Federation on the basis of its comprehensive analysis. The main objectives of the paper are: a) to analyse the historical existence of a transport tax in Russia; b) to identify the public payments, where the object are vehicles; c) the define and study the main elements of the transport tax; d) to analyse the concept of "tax administration", as well as its forms and methods that can be applied in the procedure of administration of the transport tax; e) study of law enforcement practice and identify problems in the field of transport taxation; f) to analyse the foreign experience in taxation of vehicles and assess the possibility of applying this experience in Russia; g) to develop proposals for improving the procedure of administration of the transport tax or for its replacement by other payments. The methodological basis of the study was general scientific and special methods of cognition. The dialectical method, formal-logical methods of knowledge - induction and deduction, historical-legal method, comparative and comparative legal methods, formal-legal method and statistical method were used in the paper. The main conclusions of the author: firstly, an analysis of law enforcement practice showed that the procedure of administration of transport taxation in Russia is ineffective; secondly, due to the fact that the problems arising from the procedure of administration of the transport tax create opportunities for tax evasion by taxpayers, the transport tax needs to be reformed; thirdly, the author proposes the replacement of the vehicle tax with a fuel tax.