Legal Regulation of the Provision of Inter-Budgetary Subsidies

The subject of the research is the norms of the budget legislation of the Russian Federation aimed at regulating relations related to the provision of inter-budget subsidies. The purpose of the study is to consider the concept of “subsidy”, to determine the main features inherent in this legal category, to analyze inter-budgetary subsidies on their basis, to identify problems in the legal implementation of these inter-budgetary transfers, to develop proposals for their legislative resolution, to present the Author's definition of the concept of “inter-budgetary subsidies”. The methodological basis of the study is a set of scientific methods: formal-legal, structural-functional, comparison, search and analysis of scientific and regulatory material. The scientific basis of the study was the work of scientists in the field of financial and budgetary law. With regard to inter-budgetary subsidies, the content of this concept, the definition of the signs of the cash payment in question, which distinguish it from other inter-budgetary transfers, is of particular importance. In addition, in the study of inter-budgetary subsidies, the issues of their compensatory and gratuitous nature, the voluntariness and coercion of the provision of interbudgetary subsidies, including the possibility of the existence of subsidies as transformed fiscal and tax payments, are of particular scientific and practical importance. On the basis of the features inherent in subsidies, the article presents arguments about the gratuitousness of inter-budgetary subsidies, formulates proposals for the abolition of subsidies provided to the budget of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation from the local budget as inconsistent with the requirements of subsidizing and acting as a tool for forced withdrawal of budgetary funds. Also, despite the existence of the practice of normative legal regulation of relations on the provision of intergovernmental subsidies on the terms of 100 percent co-financing, the article substantiates the conclusion that such an approach is inadmissible. Based on a comparative analysis of inter-budgetary subsidies and other inter-budgetary transfers, the study makes an introduction to the need to amend the legislation to eliminate the identity of the purposes of providing these transfers and the regulatory case of 100 percent co-financing of other inter-budgetary transfers. Based on the results of the study, the article presents the Author's definition of inter-budgetary subsidies.