An urgent task today is to strengthen the importance of property taxation, measured not only by quantitative indicators, but also by the correct perception of tax by local authorities. The scope of the research is the development of the process of fiscal decentralization in Russia. The subject of the study is the relationship of the principle of benefits in property taxation with the process of fiscal decentralization at a local and regional level. The employed research methods include logical analysis, the descriptive method and systematic presentation of the results of statistical analysis. The aim of the article is to study the importance of property taxes for the implementation of fiscal decentralization in Russia. As a result of the calculations, it was concluded that there is a tendency toward an increased financial dependence of local governments and increased centralization at the local level. It is shown that increasing transfer dependence and increasing centralization at the level of administrative centers of the regions while reducing gratuitous assistance at the regional level indicates a concentration of resources around the regional capitals and a decrease in financial support for smaller areas. The author proposes that the benefit principle in the property taxation system in Russia should be introduced and proves the possibility of doing that. The principle implies the transfer of property taxes to the targeted category, when tax revenues are directed toward specific items of municipal expenditures. The ultimate goal of introducing the principle of benefit is to increase the responsibility of local authorities regarding the efficient provision of municipal public goods, highlight the importance of property taxes and strengthen fiscal decentralization at the local level. To determine the potential ability of property taxes to fulfill the target function, a ratio of municipalities’ fiscal self-sufficiency was proposed and calculated, which allows one to determine the share of net expenditures of budgets subject to financing with property tax. The input data for the study was borrowed from statistical data on the execution of regional and local budgets, as well as tax revenue reports of tax authorities.
The paper is devoted to the issue of centralization in public finance in Russia, and highlights one of the problems of interpretation of the Russian Constitution clauses. The Rulings of the Russian Federation Constitutional Court from the period 1997–2006 created legal grounds for the process of centralization and reduction of the regional powers regarding budgeting and taxation. But all arguments of the Court are debatable. Wherein, the centralization is justified by the constitutional principle of uniform economic area. The author argues that the Russian Constitution does not have clauses establishing the uniform budget and tax systems directly, and any model of intergovernmental relations might comply with the Russian Constitution. Uniformity of economic area does not imply uniformity in taxation and budgeting in the sense of sameness. Study of foreign practices shows different approaches to the understanding of uniformity in economy, and in taxation and budgeting. The contemporary Russian public finance law is formed under the influence of the Constitutional Court’s legal positions, and the process of centralization is still evolving. The Russian history of intergovernmental relations (1991–1997) shows another model of fiscal federalism – the decentralized federalism. Replacement of the fiscal federalism models is determined by the political considerations, not by constitutional requirements.
Рустем Магизов, С. В. Кузнецов, Kasatova Anastasia, Gilmanov Muhamat · 6 authors
The society is constantly looking for the fastest and most convenient way to make transfers and payments that are necessary for the development of economic relations. Currently a variety of forms of remittances is used. Most of them initially had a paper form, then with the development of technology they acquired an electronic form. The introduction of new financial technologies contributes to the transition to the digital form of their implementation. One of such financial technologies is the blockchain technology, which operates on the basis of protocols (rules) of accounting for operations with "cryptocurrency". The name "cryptocurrency" or "cryptographic currency" comes from the encryption technology "cryptography", so this name can be considered as a technological one. For the development of approaches to legal regulation, the priority, according to the author, is to determine the essence of the definition of “cryptocurrency”, i.e. establishing its scope and content, indicating the distinctive features.
О. О. Панова, Yuliia Leheza, A. V. Ivanytsia, Volodymyr Marchenko · 13 authors
The article considers the complex issue of the existence of national cryptocurrency markets and their legal regulation and ethics of use. The article provides an analytical review of leading models of legal regulation of cryptocurrency circulation in different countries of the world. The study was carried out in the methodological field: the development of the national cryptocurrency market, the legal interpretation of the cryptocurrency, the legal basis of circulation, ethics and the cryptocurrency exchange platforms, the directions of development of the national model of legal regulation and support.
Abstract:at the beginning of 2018, considerable attention of lawyers attracted the case of a citizen’s bankruptcy with the decision to include cryptocurrency in the bankruptcy estate. This case exposed a number of problems associated with legal uncertainty regarding new technology products. What is cryptocurrency? To what objects of civil rights should it be attributed? What is the foreign practice and has the global tendency of regulating such relations formed? It is these issues that have become key to this article and determine its structure. The history of the issue, which has been going on for more than twenty years, is examined, foreign approaches of the legislator and law enforcer to regulate these relations are examined, the question of the economic nature of cryptocurrency is touched upon and, most importantly, questions are raised that law enforcers and legislators have yet to find answers.
Development of digital technology opens up new opportunities for corporate governance. At the same time, modern law faces a difficult task – to find a balance between creating conditions for development of technologies including by means of non-interference, and providing the stakeholders in corporate governance with proper legal guarantees. This paper considers the impact of some of the most significant digital technologies on corporate governance, such as distributed ledger technology, smart contracts and artificial intelligence. There are certain legal trends and challenges arising from such innovations including the pursuance of sociability, peer-to-peer and decentralization of corporate governance which in many cases is associated with abolishing of bodies (of a part of bodies) for a corporation management, or transferring their powers (a part of powers) to the corporation members and/or to a computer program (artificial intelligence, algorithm, smart contract). Besides, the paper considers occurrences of new subject of corporate relations – crypto-assets (tokens) holders as well as the possibility for recognition of the legal personality of computer programs, in particular, decentralized autonomous organizations and artificial intelligence.
In the context of the digital transformation of the European economy and society, new technologies have emerged bringing new opportunities for the benefit of citizens, public administrations and businesses. One of these is the Blockchain-based smart contracts rooted in what is known as Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). This article aims to provide an overview of how DLTs could be successfully implemented in the governance of public procurement, as well as discussing some legal challenges that might appear. Taking into account the proof of concept of all the existing projects in this field, DLTs promise to provide procuring with a high level of transparency, integrity, autonomy, and overall speed-up procurement cycles. While the architecture of a Blockchain-based public procurement scheme is constrained by the immaturity of the technology, it is observed that the establishment of private ledgers (or public-permissioned ledgers) in tender procedures might be more suitable to public procurement. Although the process of implementation might be costly and less feasible in comparison with other fields in the public sector, initiatives focusing on this area should be endorsed. Ultimately, the successful implementation of DLTs in the governance of public procurement is inconceivable without a far-reaching professionalisation of procurement practitioners. Keywords: Blockchain; Smart Public Contracts; Artificial Intelligence; Digital Governance; Distributed Ledger Technology; Digital Procurement.
Decentralized Justice in the Era of Blockchain ODR that is built on blockchain technology and infrastructure is championed by supporters as being capable of revolutionizing dispute resolution. Kleros is a decentralized dispute resolution platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that uses cryptoeconomic theories and game theory to recruit and incentivize a worldwide pool of ‘jurors’ to decide the cases arbitrated through the platform. This article discusses some early evaluations of whether this kind of decentralized ODR is likely to succeed by viewing the model through a normative framework, including considering whether crowdsourcing of justice on a decentralized platform is a viable way to conduct ODR. The article then discusses the likelihood of the success of the sub-court model, including whether choice-of-law issues might be problematic for a worldwide, decentralized system. Finally, the article considers whether the cryptoeconomic and game theories that provide the foundation for the Kleros platform are likely to result in a jury pool, much less an actual jury, that could be considered ‘fair.’ The article is informed by the author’s experience with the Kleros platform through participation in its interactive initial coin offering and engaging in its beta-testing phase.
Introduction: currently, the whole world is experiencing tremendous changes in connection with the transition to the information society. This work is devoted to the challenges faced by contract law. The aim of this work is to study the theoretical and practical problems of the legal regulation of "smart" contracts. Methods: the methodological framework for the study is the dialectical method of cognition, which assumes the comprehensiveness, objectivity and interconnectedness of the studied phenomena; the general scientific methods of cognition (analysis, synthesis, hypothesis, analogy, etc.); the comparative law and functional methods. As a result of the study, the main problems arising in the legislative regulation of "smart" contracts were grouped. The technical ones include: the problem of describing the conditions in the artificial language, obtaining the data from the real world by the system, the reliability of the input data, the system errors, the speed of transaction processing, the inability to maintain the complete confidentiality of the operations. The legal problems include: the complexity of the contract verification by a lawyer, the lack of control of transactions by the state and tax authorities, the possibility of illegal transactions, the complexity of proving the fact of the contract, the definition of the applicable law, remedies. The legislation of some foreign countries, which is also under development, is analyzed. The analysis of the draft law "On Digital Financial Assets" shows that the document does not satisfy the requests for the legal regulation of the digital economy. In the definition, there is no indication that a "smart" contract is written in the artificial language, the turnover of the crypto currency is significantly limited. It is concluded that a "smart" contract is now rational to use as part of a paper contract for simple transactions with the measurable conditions. The draft law "On Digital Financial Assets" needs the significant improvement to simplify the turnover of digital assets and the development of the institution of "smart" contracts.
The subject of the research is the tax burden of organizations engaged in new types of activities using digital information and communication technologies. The purpose of the research was to determine the specific features of the crypto economy to be taken into account in the development of measures for the tax regulation of organizations in the digital economy. It was established that the transformation of approaches to information exchange allowing economic agents to make transactions on the basis of digital platforms not linked to the geographical borders of states makes legal entities and individuals more reluctant to delegate some of the powers to the state as an institution of power. The paper classifies foreign practices of direct taxation of incomes from purchase and sale of crypto-currency, which made it possible to identify prospects for the development of tax regulation in Russia. The conceptual scenarios of taxation of cryptoproducts are analyzed and it is concluded that in creating a cryptocurrency the deferred recognition of the object of taxation is advisable in order to reduce the tax risks of users.
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Legal and Policy Issues
Economic and Technological Developments in Russia
Digitalization and Economic Development in Agriculture
The paper focuses on the definition of the legal status of the cryptocurrency in the framework of the current Russian legislation. The subject of the research is the principal scientific and practical approaches to determining the object of civil rights and the object of acquisitive crimes in terms of their adaptability to cryptocurrencies. The purposes of the work were the search for a universal algorithm for resolving civil disputes related to the turnover of the crypto currency, and the qualification of the virtual currency theft (fraud). By using historical, comparative legal and dialectical methods as well as the content analysis method parallels between cryptocurrencies and individual objects of civil rights (a thing, property rights, other property) were drawn, and a number of options for qualifying the actions related to the non-repayable withdrawal of the cryptocurrency were proposed. Finally, the paper analyzes the draft laws prepared by the RF Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and presents the author’s vision of the prospects for legalizing the cryptocurrency as an object of civil rights.
The article considers the Swiss model of fiscal municipalization from the ideological and methodological positions of the anthroposociocultural approach. Such components of this approach as historical and genetic methods together with the method of system-structural analysis were applied especially thoroughly and consistently. By means of them it was found that the Swiss model of fiscal decentralization is an attributive part of the construction of public power in Switzerland – municipalization from bottom to top. Special attention is drawn to defining the basic legal features of the Swiss model of fiscal municipalization. It is argued that subsidiarity does not paradigmatically coincide with decentralization: the principle of subsidiarity postulates the sovereignty of the basic territorial collectives and considers the possible conditions for its limitation for general social needs and values. On the contrary, the principle of decentralization has the national level of governance as the starting point and considers the conditions of delegation of certain tasks and competences by the state to the lower levels of public power hierarchy in the principal frames of state sovereignty. Specificity of the principle of subsidiarity in Switzerland is that cantons play dual role from the standpoint of administrative federalism. On the one hand, they are the bearers of sovereignty of public power, including taxation. On the other hand, they are the sole bearers of administrative authority and are obliged to serve national interests, that is, the needs of the entire Swiss Confederation. Paradox is that this service function of the cantons gives them considerable benefits in the inevitable opposition to the Union state, when it comes to provision of services of the entire fiscal system and the entire system of public finance.
In the current article the legal nature and properties of the cryptocurrency phenomenon are disclosed through the analysis and comparison of the results of «judicial finding» of law that are recorded in the judicial acts. The author reveals, that judicial law of the different jurisdictions goes on the path of recognition of the bitcoin’s (and other cryptocurrencies) nature as the phenomenon that possesses the basic legal properties of money. It is established, that judges in the predominant majority use the following definitions for the characteristic of cryptocurrency: a decentralized currency; an asset that serves as a means of exchange and/or a measure of value; an anonymous digital currency; a virtual currency; an asset that serves as a means of payment; a digital production; an anonymized settlement system; a non–traditional money, etc. The author shows, that cryptocurrencies (in that sense in which they are interpreted in judicial law) have attributive properties that are inherent for the anthroposociocultural phenomena: cryptocurrencies are existentially rooted, they have a spontaneous and at the same time procedural character, they dynamically transformed into the universal phenomenon from the local phenomena, cryptocurrencies act as a natural way of self–regulation, distribution, redistribution and exchange of goods in society between its representatives, primarily in the private sector. The author substantiates the fundamental sense of the «judicial finding» of the legal nature and properties of cryptocurrency, which consists in the synthesis of the pluralistic nature of both crucial phenomena of social life – law and money: cryptocurrencies, as the phenomena that possess the qualities of money, act as the objects (subjects) of the factual life relations in which the question about the law raises. Thereby in the article it is once and again confirmed the full reliability and validity of one of the main Eugen Ehrlich’s theoretical and methodological conclusions, which he made more than a century ago – the conclusion about the poly–ontological nature of law, which is under no circumstances limited to the positive law and therefore cannot be narrowed to the positive legal norms.. Keywords: method of the judicial finding of law; nature of law; legal nature of cryptocurrency (bitcoin); legal properties of cryptocurrency (bitcoin). Received: 22.02.2018 Accepted: 23.03.2018 https://doi.org/10.31861/ehrlichsjournal2018.02.024
The paper analyzes the specific nature of high-tech systems in IT area in terms of the transition to the digital economy (Digital Economy of the Russian Federation program). The research identifies the characteristics of legal regulation of databases, distributed ledgers, and blockchain technology. The author determines that the legal regime of databases is admissible with regard to the above-mentioned systems. The study reveals the aspects of special sectoral laws and regulations applied to databases in order to introduce distributed ledgers and blockchain technology. The research considers the dual nature of database laws governing blockchain technology in different ways. The author concludes that laws and regulations concerning databases can be implemented to introduce distributed ledgers and blockchain technology considering their specific legal nature for particular legal relations.
A. Goriacheva, N. Jakubenko, O. Pogodina, Dmitry S. Silnov
This article is devoted to the exploration of services of anonymizing transactions, based on the Mixer, CoinJoin and CoinSuffle technologies, as well as to the description of the core principles of operation of these technologies and technical details. It analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of different realizations of this service. It formulates the problem of cryptocurrency laundering through anonymization services and offers solutions to this problem.Keywords: cryptocurrency, blockchain, bitcoin, mixing service, mining, money laundering.