Detection of tax crimes by regulatory and law enforcement authorities (experience of normative legal regulation in the "zero years")

The article gives a brief overview of the experience of normative legal regulation of the activities of regulatory (tax) and law enforcement agencies since the transition of the economy of the Russian Federation to market relations. The state of certain legislative acts, as well as (inter-) departmental orders and instructions governing the legal regime of tax administration, is subjected to constructive criticism.The attention of readers is drawn to the quality of that part of them, which is dedicated to regulating the order of interaction and information exchange between employees of the tax, operational-search and investigative bodies. The incorrectness of certain key formulations used in numerous (inter-) departmental instructions, some of which was canceled or adjusted relatively recently, is emphasized. Among them, the author of the article includes, in particular, the phrase “identifying circumstances that suggest a violation of the law on taxes and fees containing signs of a crime”, which is perceived with enviable persistence by the latest legislative and other acts, while it could be would be stated in a more acceptable form, focusing on “identifying signs of a tax crime”. In this laconic way, the developers of tax legislation and (inter-) departmental normative legal regulation would free thematic legal potential from excessive semantic load.