The respective percentage was even greater, 64, in a similar probe of 2001. As the latest probe shows, more people think tax evasion excusable when it is safe-32 per cent against a previous 26.
The higher the personal income, the milder the respondent is on tax dodgers. Only 26 per cent of people with monthly incomes below 1,500 rubles per capita find excuses for them. The percentage rises to 38 in the 3,000-5,000 ruble bracket, and to 58 with incomes exceeding 5,000 rubles. As for respondents who think tax avoidance inexcusable, they make 59 per cent in the worst-off group, as against 38 per cent for incomes of 5,000 rubles or more. The highest-income group alone revealed tax dodgers to be more numerous than conscientious taxpayers. (R27.9/$1 is the Central Bank rate for today.)
Three years have passed since Russia introduced flat income taxation, at 13 per cent. The public has remained just as harsh on the arrangement. A mere 25 per cent of respondents said it was just, while 65 per cent were of a contrasting opinion. The better off a respondent is the more enthusiastically he refers to it. Approving are 42 per cent of people who describe their incomes as "good" or "very good", 27 per cent of people "comfortably off", and 16 per cent of the "poor" and "extremely poor". A spectacular 49 per cent of the better-off people said flat taxation was unjust. The respective percentage in the lowest-income bracket was 74.
Flat taxation helps to legalize gray incomes. That is its proponents' principal argument. Be that as it may, only 31 per cent of respondents agreed on it, as against 53 per cent of the disapproving. People in all income brackets were skeptical on the point. Indicatively, the people who are making more than 5,000 rubles a month were somewhat more optimistic about it-39 per cent.
The probe, of May 14-15, involved 1,600 respondents resident in a hundred urban and rural settlements in forty constituent entities-regions, territories and autonomies-out of the Russian Federation's entire 89. The statistical error held within 3.4 per cent.
