Pechenkina, A. A. On the Legal Nature of Creation and Termination of Obligation to Pay a Tax

Abstract: The article is devoted to the grounds of creation and termination of obligation to pay a tax. The author of the article focuses on the fact that the term ‘object of taxation’ has the same meaning as the term ‘item subject to tax’ in the Tax Code of the Russian Federation. Tax and levy legislation, while setting forth the category ‘object of taxation’ in Article 38 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, only lists objects of taxation and defines operations for realization of goods (works or services), property, profit, revenue, cost of realized goods (completed works or rendered services) and other objects that have their value, quantitative and physical characteristics and that create the obligation to pay a tax. The reason of such inaccuracy is that the law-maker did not provide the definition of the ‘item subject to tax’ but assigned all properties of the item subject to tax to the ‘object of taxation’. Based on the analysis of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, the author of the present article establishes that the two terms, ‘object of taxation’ and ‘item subject to tax’ were, in fact, used as having the same meaning. The author of the present article describes the similarities and differences between ‘object of taxation’ and ‘item subject to tax’ an analyzes the relation between a taxpayer and the item subject to tax that creates the obligation to pay a tax. Taking into account the results of the analysis of existing views of academic lawyers and legal provisions of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, the author of the article shares her ideas on how to improve the tax legislation. The Russian Federation law does not provide an extensive definition of the term ‘object of taxation’ and the categories defined by the law as objects of taxation have all the characteristics of the ‘item subject to taxation’, therefore the author states the following: in Clause 1 of Article 38 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation the term ‘object of taxation’ has the meaning of the ‘item subject to tax’. Moreover, whether there is an object of taxation or not and whether the obligation to pay a tax should be created shall depend on the legal relation between the ‘item’ and a taxpayer.

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