Taxation in Moldova

Taxes are a defined as mandatory payments of the contributors to the budget and to the extra-budgetary funds in the amount determined by law and within the stipulated deadlines. Taxes represent the monetary relations of the state with corporations and individuals regards to the redistribution of the national income and the mobilisation of financial resources to the budgetary and non-budgetary funds of the state. Taxes became a necessary element of the socio-economic relations at the moment of the state formation. The development and transformation of the organisational forms of the state were always associated with a modification of the taxation system, which depends on the development level of the state’s democratic forms.

The economic essence of the state was addressed for the first time in the work of D. Ricardo, who wrote “Taxes form the share of the produce and work of the country, which is transferred to the government, and ultimately they are always paid from the capital or income of the country.”

Russian economists also made a certain contribution to the development of the taxation theory. Among them, N. I. Turguenev mentioned the following: “Taxes are the essence and the means for the achievement of the goal of society or the state, i.e. of the goal that people assume for society.” Sokolov wrote: “Taxes should be understood as the compulsory collection of funds charged by the state from corporations and individuals in order to provide for its costs, without offering the tax-payer a corresponding equivalent.” This means that the state collects with the help of taxes means for the formation of a centralised state fund necessary for the fulfilment of the state functions.

Taxation theory constitutes a part of the finance science. Taxation plays a role in the process of redistribution of the new value, is involved in the process of reproduction, and constitutes a specific form of production relations. The source of taxation is the newly created value, i.e. the national income. The source of tax payments is the value added of the product and a fraction of the value of the necessary product.

Taxation, as a particular type of production relation, constitutes a specific economic category with stable internal features, development patterns and forms of manifestation. However, taxation is not just an economic but also a financial category. Taxation has general traits pertaining to all the financial relations, but at the same time, it has its own defining features and functions, which differentiate taxation from the entirety of financial relations.