Tax Audit: Contents, Invariance of Approaches and Perspective of Development

The creation of an effective model of tax control demands a clear regulation of its forms and the conduct order, therefore the substantiation of the generally accepted approach to the content of the tax audit is important. At the legislative level, the tax audit is not defined, therefore in practice, this definition has different informative content. The purpose of the article is to reveal the main approaches and implement the comparative analysis of the interpretation of the concept of "tax audit". The main benefits and shortcomings of the existing approaches on thoughts of certain scientists are defined, the actual vision of the essence and content of the mentioned concept is formulated and substantiated. The necessity of delineating the concepts of the "tax audit" and the "audit of taxation" is substantiated. It is determined that the content of the tax audit is determined by the subject of its conduct, therefore it is reasonable to use the concepts of "state tax audit" and "non-state (independent) tax audit". Separate consideration should be given to internal tax audit, conducted to control the accuracy of tax calculations, the assessment of tax risks, providing recommendations to owners and senior management on taxation optimization. Thus, it was confirmed that tax audit as a special task of an independent audit control, the type of control activity of authorized state bodies and the objective estimation of evidence by an internal auditor for the formation of independent conclusions regarding tax calculations and reporting is clearly defined by the subject of the conduct and the purpose of the results of control. The term "tax audit" is offered to be used in the context of verification of certain types of taxes (tax audit of income tax, value added tax, etc.). It is confirmed that the development and adoption of normative and legal acts in the field of tax audit will simplify and arrange the activities of controlling bodies, and will allow minimizing tax risks of business entities.