Tax Incentives for Innovative Activities

Abstract

Innovative activity is always a powerful driver of social and economic development of any state. At the same time, research and development also needs a certain amount of nourishment, first of all, from the state, in particular through the appropriate regulatory and legal mechanisms for its incentive. And the more the state is interested in scientific and technical development, the wider the circle should be and the more perfect the mechanisms for incentive innovative activity should be. The purpose of this article is to analyze the norms of the current regulatory legal acts of Ukraine, which provide for tax benefits in connection with the implementation of innovative activities, as well as to compare them with tax preferences in some countries of the European Union. Thus, the procedure for providing tax relief for funds received from the Innovation Development Fund (Ukrainian Startup Fund) has been analyzed. The elements of the legal mechanism for granting this benefit are singled out and characterized, its impact on the object and tax base is determined, and the circle of taxpayers to whom it applies is outlined. The legal status of the Ukrainian Startup Fund, the order and scope of its financing from the state budget have been determined. Attention was also paid to determining the essence and features of the provision of budget grants, their impact on the incentive of innovative activity. The elements of the tax-legal mechanism for providing budget grants are characterized, their impact on the object and tax base is indicated, and the categories of taxpayers who are entitled to a tax benefit in connection with receiving a budget grant are established. It is emphasized that today tax benefits apply only to budget grants provided by the Ukrainian Cultural Fund. In turn, on the basis of the analysis of the works of scientists from legal and economic sciences, a list of the most common tax benefits used to incentive innovative activity was determined in global practice. Particular attention is paid to the peculiarities of tax incentives for innovative activity in Poland, Hungary, Spain and France. Common features and fundamental differences between the concepts of tax and legal incentives of innovative activity in Ukraine and in the specified countries of the European Union have been established.