State Revenues

State Revenues 

revenues intended for the use of the state in carrying out its functions.

Under capitalism state revenues appear mainly in the form of taxes, in which, as K. Marx indicated, “the economically expressed existence of the state is embodied” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 4, p. 308). In the leading capitalist countries taxes constitute the primary source of state revenues. They amount to more than one-third of the national income. In bourgeois states state revenues include state budget revenues, income of independent government corporations, and nonbudgetary funds (such as social security). In developing countries on a noncapitalist path, state revenue growth depends to a considerable extent on the strengthening of the state sector of the economy.

Under socialism, state revenues are part of the national income, which is concentrated directly in the state budget (centralized fund) and in the state enterprises (decentralized funds) to meet the financial requirements of expanding socialist reproduction and to cover other government expenditures for raising the living standard of the people. Nontax revenues constitute more than 90 percent of all budgetary resources; they include the entire revenues of state enterprises used in accordance with their financial plans. The accumulations of the socialist economy are the stable, ever-expanding basis of raising state revenues. The words of V. I. Lenin have been realized: “In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat and state ownership of the principal means of production, the state finances must be based on the direct appropriation of a certain part of the revenue from the different state monopolies to meet the needs of the state” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 38, p. 122). The growth of profits from enterprises on profit-and-loss accounting permits the wider use of profits to expand production and to stimulate high work results. The economic reform carried out in the USSR since 1966 has brought about a restructuring of the public revenue system: in the past, payments were transferred from the profits into the budget in the form of set deductions, regardless of economic conditions, whereas now the size of payments is determined to a considerable extent by the degree of economic management efficiency. The goal of reform has been met by the introduction of the payable production fund and the improvement of the entire system of payments from profits to the budget.

R. D. VINOKUR