Subject The article addresses tax revenues of the Russian Federation at different levels of its budget system. The paper provides a comparative analysis of risks and efficiency of tax systems of subjects of the Russian Federation for different levels of the budget system. Objectives Our purpose is to assess risk and efficiency of tax revenues at different levels of budget formation, i.e. federal, regional, local, and for the consolidated budget. Methods The study applies the portfolio approach by G. Markowitz to assess the risk of tax systems of Russian regions at the stage of consolidated budget formation. We used the W. Sharpe ratio to compare the efficiency of regional tax systems at different levels of the budget system. Results Our analysis reveals that the highest risks and the highest yield of the tax system are at the stage of the federal budget formation; while the risks and tax returns of regional and local budgets are lower. At the same time, the efficiency of tax systems estimated with the W. Sharpe ratio in average is higher at the regional level as compared with federal and local levels. Conclusions The inter-regional differentiation of tax systems' efficiency decreases from upper to lower levels of the budget system; this is a result of smoothing the inter-regional differences through applying the tax distribution rules.
Keywords: tax system, fiscal system, risk, rate of return, Sharpe ratio
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