Approaches to reducing social inequality in Russia through the Personal Income Tax reform

Subject. The article investigates approaches to reducing social inequality in Russia through personal income tax reform. Objectives. The purpose is to develop a progressive model of individual income taxation in Russia, enabling to redistribute the tax burden from the low-income to high-income population, to assess possible consequences of introducing a progressive personal income tax rate scale proposed by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. Methods. The study rests on methods of statistical dynamic analysis, induction, deduction, scientific generalization, analogy, classification. The data source was statistical information provided on official websites of the Federal State Statistics Service and Federal Tax Service of Russia. Results. The study revealed significant stratification of the population by income level. Russia has a very weak personal income tax progression. The additional tax rate, which is 2 percentage points higher than the generally established one for incomes exceeding 5 million rubles per year, does not allow the tax burden to be spread out between low-income and high-income categories of the population with the greatest fairness. I developed a version of changes in the size of personal income tax rates, providing for 1 percent point reduction in the tax rate for low- and middle-income individuals, while increasing it to 35% for high-income groups of taxpayers. Conclusions. The offered model of progressive taxation is capable, unlike the variant of the Ministry of Finance of Russia, to reduce social inequality in the country, and prevent an increase in the total tax burden on the population.