CONDITIONS FOR IMPROVING EFFICIENCY OF FISCAL TOOLS FOR RUSSIAN SMALL ENTERPRISES SUPPORT

The work is aimed at defining the conditions necessary for improving efficiency of state support of small enterprises in the Russian Federation. For this purpose, the article estimates the efficiency of three tools for encouraging small enterprises: reduced tax rates, budget subsidies and access to public procurement. This research is based on data concerning the number of small enterprises, the number of their employees, turnover and investments, as well as the information on tax rate in relation to difference between income and expenses in case a simplified tax system is applied and volumes of small enterprises subsidies and state procurement in Russian regions. Double logarithmic regression has been applied for modeling interrelation of each business activity indicator (dependent variables) and state support volume (independent variable) on the regional level. The estimation of equations coefficients has been performed basing on fixed effects. The conclusion demonstrates low efficiency of Russian state policy for supporting small enterprises. The elasticity of business activity level depending on state support volume does not exceed 0.3. The biggest effect was achieved by public procurement and tax privileges, but their impact on business activity is selective compared to budget subsidies. The priority condition for increasing the payoff of state incentives is the radical change in applied tools. The ways to optimize state policy related to small enterprises using current tools include substitution of state subsidies with an expansion of tax privileges and increase in volume of public procurements. The combined influence of these measures covers various aspects of business activities. The fulfillment of this condition enables to increase the payoff of fiscal measures of Russian small enterprise support in 1.5-2 times.