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The research aims to comprehensively study a relatively new institute of Russian tax law – the value-added tax (VAT) office. For this purpose, the authors use the following research methods: logical, hypothetico-deductive, formal-legal, and comparative-legal. The research novelty is due to the subject of scientific analysis and the synthesis of the obtained research results. Particularly, the essential features of digital platforms are investigated. It is noted that the concepts of “digital platform” and “foreign company providing electronic services in Russia” are not identical. The research considers the foreign experience of tax accounting and VAT registration of companies. The simplicity of accounting of foreign companies is an important advantage of the tax jurisdiction: the simpler the grounds and procedure of registration, the more taxpayers express their intention for voluntary registration. Thus, the research discusses the problems of registration and deregistration, as well as the voluntary registration of such companies. Currently, 3,292 companies are registered in Russia, which indicates the success of this tax institution. Simultaneously, it is noted that there is a lack of law enforcement practice directly related to the VAT office. This order of things may testify in favor of the effectiveness of the complex of legal norms under consideration.

Tax evasion and money laundering have become important sources of illicit financial flows in developing countries. Foreign capital flows used by shell corporates are generally with no real economic activities but motivated by harmful tax practices, thereby inducing loss of revenue for developing countries. Despite the coercive actions, such as backlisting of noncooperative jurisdictions to anti-money laundering and countering terrorism financing standards, illicit financial activities are still eroding the tax base in developing countries. The purpose of the paper is to assess the blacklisting effectiveness as a coercive policy against illicit financial activities.

This paper applies a propensity score matching strategy to a sample of 118 developing jurisdictions from 2009 to 2017 to evaluate changes in illicit financial activities following the blacklisting.

The results show that rather than altering illicit inflows in blacklisted countries, financial restrictions have produced the inverse, causing a boomerang effect on financial crime activities. The illicit share of capital inflows increases on average by 6 percentage points and 0.7% of GDP following the blacklisting. These results are robust to alternative matching methods and to the hidden bias problem.

Most of the previous research analyzed the link between blacklisting and fiscal revenues. However, here, the study analyzes whether blacklisting makes countries more cooperative in terms of fighting illicit financial flows.