Report on the Coordinated Audit on Tax Subsidies (in Russian)
The VI EUROSAI Congress held in Bonn from 30 May to 2 June 2005 dealt with the audit of public revenues by Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs).The analysis of the country papers submitted by EUROSAI’s members prior to the congress showed, among others, that there was still insufficient knowledge about the effectiveness of tax subsidies, noted the extent and complexity of tax legislation that can lead to tax shortfalls and tax exceptions and concluded that SAIs should develop more reliable findings about the volume and target achievement of such tax subsidies.
The Congress therefore advocated conducting a coordinated audit of tax subsidies that was open to all EUROSAI members. For that purpose, a Working Group was set up to coordinate the planning of the audit and to establish the contents and headings of it.
The Supreme Audit Institutions of Germany, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovak Republic, United Kingdom and Netherlands (observer) participated in the audit.
The objectives of the coordinated audit were:
- Enhancing the sharing of knowledge,
- Enhancing communication between EUROSAI Members in areas of special interest,
- Obtaining best practice information,
- Strengthening informal networks,
To obtain comparable results, a checklist was drafted that addressed all stages of a tax subsidy from legislation via implementation up to reporting. At the same time, this checklist formed the non-binding framework for an audit of transparency and reporting. Furthermore, three Working Sub-Groups were set up to deal with specific tax subsidies: Corporate Income Tax , Value Added Tax and Transparency and Subsidy Report.
After completing audit work, the Working Group came to the conclusion that, concerning tax subsidies, improvements were needed in the fields of legislation, evaluation and reporting in all participant states in order to create the overall transparency which it considered necessary both for the legislator and the general public.
SOURCE: https://www.eurosai.org/en/working-groups/historic-working-groups-committees/coordinated-audit-on-tax-subsidies-working-group/index.html
*This report is also available in the catalogue in English, Spanish, German and French.