The destabilization processes of the Russian Federation’s budget system, primarily at the regional level, are becoming longterm in their nature. It is necessary to find ways to overcome these processes. The current measures by the authorities are aimed at reducing budget expenditures and will not solve the existing problems. In the authors’ opinion, these are, first of all, the failures of tax policy concerning the major taxpayers. The main purpose of the article is to provide the selected research results of the Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the taxation of major oil and metals corporations, their relations with both federal and regional budgets. The analysis of regulatory acts allowed to conclude that the standard practice of major taxpayers’ tax administration hardly corresponds to the basic principles of taxation. As a result, in recent years, revenues from the main income source of the territories — income tax steadily decline; industrial production development is limited by the inefficient tax concession system and the increasing costs, corporate management imbalances. These imbalances suppose that the interests of private capital owners and the management of state corporations prevail over the solution of the issues of social development. The paper proposes some measures to improve the profit taxation and increase the fiscal function of income tax. We have developed a differentiated scale of refunds from the budget of valueadded tax paid by large commodity exporters with a view to provide incentives for increasing exports of competitive products. The article also suggests that with continued centralization of the system of tax distribution across government levels, a part of additional revenues generated through the implementation of a selective approach to the provision of tax incentives could be used to increase financial support of the regions.

Russia’s economic power rests upon large business. Thus, it is essential to develop taxation models for maintaining the balance between the interests of both entrepreneurs and the state, while saving high national budget capacity and business activity. We analyzed a new mechanism of profit taxation regulation for consolidated groups of taxpayers (CGT) in order to assess the impact of CGT on budget revenues formation. Research results have confirmed the hypothesis about low efficiency of tax consolidation. The CGT regime leads to unfair tax revenues distribution among sub-federal budgets, creating budget planning uncertainty. Examples of largest ironworks corporations reveal destructive influence of CGT on regional budget revenues formation: our calculations have illustrated that at least in four Russian regions annual budget losses range from 3 to 9 billion rubles. We have demonstrated the correlation between balanced calculation of tax base within CGT and profit taxation minimization as the main source of corporate owners’ growing welfare. Reduced tax burden of consolidated taxpayers is not accompanied by intensified investment activity. We have concluded that consolidation of tax liabilities has led to formally legitimate but unprofitable optimization. A steady decline of tax revenues from consolidated groups has intensified destabilizing processes in regional budget systems and has become a motive for CGT abolition by the government. Considering that consolidated groups formed in the period from 2012 to 2013 will operate until 2023, we propose measures to neutralize the negative consequences of their functioning.