The guilt of a legal entity in administrative law: problem statement

Introduction. The author considers the main contradictions of legal regulation of the institute of guilt of a legal entity in administrative law. The relevance of the problem is due to the lack of legislative certainty in the construction of the guilt of a legal entity, which leads to ambiguous law enforcement practice, violation of the principles of justice and presumption of innocence in bringing the specified subject to administrative responsibility. The purpose of the article is to analyse the ‘models’ of guilt of a legal entity in administrative, tax, civil legislation, as well as to identify the problem of harmonisation of current legislation, law enforcement practice, including in order to change the vector of fiscal orientation of state policy when bringing to administrative responsibility of a legal entity. Methods. General scientific (analysis, synthesis, systematisation) and private-scientific (formal-legal, comparative-legal) methods of scientific cognition allowed to rethink theoretical, practical aspects and approaches to the definition of guilt of a legal entity in administrative law. Results. The main problems of legal regulation of the institute of guilt in administrative law are formulated in this research. It seems that in order to bring law enforcement practice in line with the fundamental principles of administrative responsibility – legality, fairness, presumption of innocence – the guilt of a legal entity, as a legal category needs to be harmonised. The legislative construction of the model of guilt of a legal entity should ensure that the balance of private and public interests of the state is observed for the purpose of economic and political stability.