The article states that economic recession forces economic entities to seek ways to decrease a tax burden. However, such an opportunity appears only in the event of effective tax planning. The author emphasizes that approaches to tax planning have underwent transformation over last decades. Certain types of tax planning, which a few years ago were considered legitimate and acceptable, are regarded as inadmissible and illegal. Moreover, this is an opinion of not only fiscal bodies but also many taxpayers. The lack of definition of tax planning formalized in legislation and clear understanding of its nature complicates the use of the tax planning system in modern entrepreneurial practice. In addition, there is a long-standing need to distinguish between legitimate instruments of such planning and intentional tax evasion. The author has developed and presented a concept of tax planning, studied the transformation of approaches to its definition, specified the wording and identified its tasks, structural stages and participants at the level of economic entities. The author has also compared tax planning with other ways of tax liabilities optimization, i.e. tax evasion and avoidance of some types of taxes. The author concluded that tax saving increases in-house financial resources of an economic entity. Therefore, the purposes of tax planning are not only searching and realizing various ways of tax optimization, but also contributing to the solution of the main objectives of business activity, i.e. financial stability increase and profit growth. Tax planning allows economic entities to achieve legitimate maximization of funds, which they have after paying taxes, with tax risks minimization (up to reducing them to zero).
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