The objective modern conditions of digital economy include the necessity of the development of innovative sciencebased production, changes in organizational structures based on the integration of business processes of economic entities, the necessity of accelerating business processes and using them as a base for sustainable growth and increased effciency of economic development. Ongoing changes mean the permanent improvement of engineering, technology and organization of production, using big data when making managerial decisions to choose the best developments and practices of solving the tasks on the basis of comparative analysis. It will also help to justify the objective factors in order to realize these decisions and to identify the risky spheres of activity and in turn to choose the effective and feasible directions of development, provide rational for conditions and effectiveness of their implementation in separate economic subjects and the national economy as a whole. The purpose of the article is: to reveal the nature and essence of the digitalization process, its peculiarities in different spheres of economic activity and preconditions of their sustainable development; to identify and highlight the position and the role of digitalization of non-fnancial sector of economy; to systemize the experience useful for implementation of the digitalization project at the modern stage of information technology development; to justify the crucial importance of the development of the system of indicators to fully digitalize the considered modern processes which in turn would require the active development of the system of collection, processing and analysis of the information using information and communication technologies; to draw attention to the topical problem of due staff training both of software developers and IT users; to single out the problems the solution of which can currently determine the prerequisites of success of the “digital economy” project in Russia.

The article reviews the existing system of control of universities’ activity in the Russian Federation. The authors single out two blocks of this system (internal and external) along with three components of external control of universities’ activity (state control; professional control; public control). The article describes the characteristic features of particular forms of state control over universities’ activity (state accreditation of educational programs, federal state control of education quality; federal state supervision over education); public control over universities’activity (public accreditation of educational programs, independent assessment of education quality); professional control over universities’ activity (professional and public accreditation of educational programs, assigning rating to universities); internal control over universities’ activity (self examination in higher educational institutions, internal control of a university as an economic entity, internal assessment of education quality). The article examines the effectiveness of control procedures applied to the main objects of control (educational programs, quality of students training, conditions of educational activity, target results of activity) and singles out the following basic trends of improving the control over universities’ activity: the increased importance of assessing the effectiveness of educational programs implementation and informal control procedures based on expert evaluations and sociological surveys. The following major directions of improving the system of control over universities’ activity in Russia are suggested: developing the state and professional system of control; establishing the audit trails of an educational system; creating the mechanisms of acknowledging the results of control by the inspectors and auditors of different level; shifting the emphasis of state control from formal methods to the check of substantive aspects (quality) of the educational process; developing the tools and methods of professional control over universities’ activity; adapting the indexes of universities global ratings to the special national features of higher educational institutions; developing the internal monitoring of effciency and quality of educational programs’ implementation and informal types of internal independent assessment of education quality.

The research is relevant as it defnes the optimal level of taxation for the BRCS members in the frames of consensual tax, budgetary and fscal policy in order to achieve the sustainable rate of economic growth, balanced development, moderate rates of inflation, high volume of production, balance of current account and low unemployment. The development of the BRICS countries as a new model of integration and inclusive development in the globalizing economy requires consensual macroeconomic policy. The author hypothesizes that consensual macroeconomic (tax and budgetary policy) may contribute to the harmonization of national economies of the BRICS members by parameters of an integration model proposed in the article. As a result of economic and mathematical modeling there were drafted the curves of the BRICS members’ budget revenue and expenditure. The author identifes the optimal weighted average tax rates to establish the balance. The graphic method is used to demonstrate the influence of tax, budgetary and fscal policy of the BRICS members on national economies and combined effect of its implementation. The practical importance of the research lies in identifying the optimal level of taxation which makes it possible to balance the BRICS members’ budgets. The calculation of the effectiveness of consensual tax, budgetary and fscal policy of the BRICS members is made on the basis of comparative analysis of the variants of fnancing the budget defcit by own means and the sources of hypothetical common debt market. The article proves that functioning of common market of debt fnance is optimal for the BRICS members on condition of using comparative advantage of China in providing credit resources to the members of the group. The theoretical signifcance of the results is the development of the methodology of harmonization of tax, budgetary and fscal policy of the BRICS members using gradual approach as opposite to “shock therapy” scenario.

To succeed in a market economy an economic entity should attract investments. The quality of accounting and analytical information about a company’s activities is an important factor in the decisions potential investors make. Accounting (fnancial) reporting is a signifcant part of the informational support of the company’s activity. The problem of reliability of the accounting (fnancial) statements has always been relevant. According to the modern concept of business audit, audit is primarily understood as an activity aimed at reducing business risks. Nowadays the main task of an auditor is to provide assurance that the accounting (fnancial) reporting does not contain signifcant misstatements because of its falsifcation, or mistakes made by employees of the auditee. Assessing the risk of fnancial statements falsifcation is an urgent and diffcult task. Though the term “falsifcation of fnancial statements” is widely used and seems clear in terms of common sense, the scientifc understanding and normative defnition of this concept is not so defnite. This article analyzes the concept of “falsifcation of fnancial statements” and approaches to its defnition in foreign and domestic practice; reviews modern tools to identify risks of fnancial statements falsifcation; discusses issues related to the use of mathematical models to identify the risk of fnancial statements falsifcation. To do this the authors analyze the index model of the American scientist M. Benish, carry out econometric tests within the assumptions of the Gauss-Markov theorem and propose a variant of developing an index model to detect accounting (fnancial) statements falsifcation. An attempt was made to create a model to identify the risk of reporting information falsifcation with a certain degree of probability that could be applied in Russia. To create such a model, called NARM, there were selected 75 reports of Russian organizations, of which 1/3 were falsifed. This model makes it possible to identify the probability of fnancial statements falsifcation to within 76%.

The content of the concept and features of applied projects in the framework of the development of the Information Economy is considered. The tasks of applied projects are defned. The main categories of applied projects are identifed according to the method of their fnancing when they are introduced into the Information Society. The main tasks that are solved by organizations during the implementation of applied projects are considered. The main risks of application of the applied projects are systematized depending on their type. The essence of each risk and threat for the company is described for all categories of the applied projects. Three groups of risk scenarios have been identifed. The factors on the basis of which the decision is made to unconditionally abandon the implementation of the applied projects are established. A multi-criteria model of primary risk assessment and the possibility of its occurrence in the implementation of the applied projects has been developed. Examples of evaluating the prospects of implementation for each category of the applied projects are proposed. In the framework of the above-mentioned risks of project implementation, a number of factors (risk assessment values) are identifed, on the basis of which an unambiguous decision is made about the inexpediency of further assessment and implementation of proposed applied projects in the company (STOP factors). The list of STOP factors is established for each project individually in view of the features of each applied project. However, a number of universal STOP factors can be identifed (low% EBT on a project and a high risk of receivables that cannot be repaid or overdue, which may adversely affect the cash flow of the applied project under consideration). As part of the implementation of the applied projects, various categories of applied projects have been allocated, depending on the costs that the company is undergoing. Each category of the applied projects has specifc risks that, to a greater or lesser extent, limit the company’s ability to implement projects. The values of risks that can clearly signal at the evaluation stage of applied projects about the inexpediency of considering the possibility of implementing the applied projects in their current form without any changes have been determined.

The article considers the problematic accounting issues of recognizing digital fnancial assets (DFA) in particular crypto currencies and tokens according to the draft of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation “About Digital Financial Assets”. The methodology of the research is based on the content-analysis of the text of the above draft as well as the use of general scientifc methods and special tools of scientifc research such as analogy and comparison. There were also used methodological bases of accounting system cognition, i.e. identifcation of subjects, items and object of accounting; singling out problematic issues in organizing accounting on methodological, methodical and organizational levels. The main results of the research include the identifcation of new subjects when fnancial assets are created and circulate along with corresponding subject areas and accounting objects for each subject. In particular the following subjects are singled out: miners, validators, DFA operations offcers and other entities making transactions with DFA. New accounting objects for these subjects are; digital transaction; digital fnancial assets; digital recording; property right in a transaction register; crypto currency rate; income and expenditure related to turnover and/or exchange of DFA; settlements with exchange operators. The author critically assesses the IFRS applicability for crypto currency accounting and formulates groups of problematic issues at each level of organizing DFA accounting. The prospects of further research include the development of methodology for accounting of each identifed subject of DFA creation and turnover in accordance with the subject and objects of accounting.

The contents of the new three instruments relating to various areas of accounting have been reviewed and critically evaluated. Among them is the «Programme for the development of the Federal accounting standards for the years 2018–2020. There have been revealed signifcant gaps in it and the main areas in which it should be refned have been identifed. This article also outlines possible consequences from the two other novels: the Russian Government planned to introduce electronic employment cards for the employees and to liberate all the organisations from submitting their annual fnancial statements to Russian Federal State Statistics Service in 2010. Apart from the positive aspects of these decisions, the article draws the readers’ attention to some, at the very least, more alarming factors from their implementation in practice.

The article deals with the current issues of cadastral valuation reliability on the example of Tambov region. The authors consider the genesis of development of cadastral valuation institute and the related matters. The problems of cadastral valuation result from the imbalance of the taxation system because property and land taxes are a few real local taxes. That is why local authorities solve the problem of the development of the local tax base by means of systematic overestimating cadastral value. In article analyses certain problems of cadastral valuation, such as procedural aspects and statistics of contesting cadastral valuation, accounting and singling out of a value added tax in the fnal result of valuation along with the arising conflicts of interest between the regional and federal authorities.

Building ratings of territorial entities both within the countries in line with their administrative-territorial division, patterns, economic, historic, social, ethnic or religious relationships, environmental features; and also when comparing individual countries and their coalitions to date is a very urgent problem, the solution of which allows for selective estimation of the level of socio-economic, political and ecological status of the territories, as well as comparing them with the unity of the methodological approaches to the assessment of the territories, and also explore the changes over time of this state or condition while maintaining comparability of the sample data on a single ranking methodology with the set of indicators. Ratings can be used as the indicators of «response» for the territorial entities and their population in the ongoing transformation of the management bodies of the territories as an integral component of their monitoring system of socio-economic, political and environmental conditions and development. The article discusses the issues of information management provision for the building of territory rating; the article also provides a scorecard to building territory ratings within a country as well as for external comparisons. The article defnes the development prospects of this methodological approach to building rankings of territories as well as the scope of such ratings.

The formation of fnancial control in Russia has been developing, starting from the 17th century, and is still continuing. For many years there have been carried out various legal changes depending on the encountered socio-economic situations. The essence and goal of fnancial controls remained unchanged. The article describes the gradual formation of fnancial control in Universities of Russia since the 18th century to the present. There are four stages: the frst stage — the frst higher educational institutions and frst fnancial authorities controlling the expenditure of the funds. The second stage marked gradual increase in the number of new universities, as well as the increased number of students, the frst Ministry of education appeared — the frst Ministry that was separately controlling the higher education. The third stage was the biggest turning point for our country — there were constantly changing departments, overseeing higher education, due to the large number of wars and revolutions the number of new universities, as well as funding, either rapidly increased or plummeted. In the fourth phase we can see a large number of different controlling fnancial bodies, a large number of universities, as well as the high level of higher education funding.