Taxes - a category directly related to the genesis of the state. The scale, methods and nature of the mobilization of financial monetary resources, the economic nature of taxes are always mediated by the level of development of society and the state created by it.
The concept and essence of taxes, the exact scope of the direction of work of financial authorities of the state, limiting their arbitrariness and dominant position in the dialogue with individuals and legal entities regarding the payment of taxes, was determined by A. Smith. The establishment of such a framework determines the further development of mutual rights and obligations between public authority, represented by the state, and private interests, represented by citizens.
The above axioms were further conceptually developed by A. Wagner. The researcher supplements and, importantly, classifies them. There are nine principles that reveal the essence of taxes and the role of the state in dealing with them, divided into four blocks.
The first group of financial and technological principles include the principles of sufficiency and mobility.
The choice of an appropriate source of taxation and certain types of taxes , taking into account the effect of taxation and its individual types on taxpayers and a general study of tax arrangement, constitute a set of economic principles.
The principles of justice are made up of universality and uniformity.
Certainty, understandable economic essence of taxes, convenience and low cost of collection form a single set of principles of tax management.
In addition to the classification, financial and political principles are highlighted separately. They appear as the most important and essential in the theory under consideration, since the authorities often have to violate the principles of justice in connection with extreme state necessity. Based on this, the financial and political principles should be higher than the national economic principles and principles of justice.
Thus, while A. Smith supported the interests of taxpayers, A. Wagner, being an adherent of the theory of collective needs, systematized the principles that took into account private and public interests, with a clear priority for the latter in the person of the state. Moreover, the classification proposed by him is not a single structural entity, since financial and political principles are adopted and considered separately from the main classification, and therefore the economic nature of taxes in it is not sufficiently disclosed.
Also interesting is the theoretical attempt to justify the improvement of tax relations through the principle of proportionality by the researcher V. Petit, who came to the conclusion that proportionally withdrawn monetary funds from taxes in no way can affect the welfare of taxpayers. Petya’s economic nature of taxes and its conclusion are disclosed as follows: when distributing the revenues accumulated in the state treasury, they will be dispersed properly according to the needs of the latter. In the work of V. Petit, there is an indirect justification of the principle of validity, which he understood as the right of the state to levy any amount of taxes at any time.
Russian thinkers of the 18th-19th centuries in assessing tax relations, the methodology of Western scientific schools was taken as a basis. The follower of the teachings of A. Smith on the principles of taxation can be called N.I. Turgenev. Having studied the guiding ideas of taxation, the scientist attached particular importance to the principle of equal distribution of the tax burden, without unreasonably believing that they should be distributed among all citizens in accordance with their income. Judgments on the principles of certainty, convenience of tax payment, reduction of tax collection costs are completely similar to the general principles of taxation of A. Smith. The consequence of this reasoning is the conclusion: the state of education of each state can be judged by the state of taxes.
It is interesting that this statement, unlike European financial thought, affects the moral and ethical side of the rational interaction of the state and society in the field of tax relations, emphasizes the importance of legal culture, which is quite relevant in our time.