APPLICATION OF THE TAX SERVICE OPEN DATA FOR ANALYSIS IN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for the creation of a geocoded tabular dataset of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Russia based on open data provided by the Federal Tax Service (FTS) of Russia. The resulting dataset encompassesthe entire territory of the country. The data is provided at the level of individual SMEs. The dataset is structured as a CSV file comprising the following fields: tax number, registration number, legal status (juridical person, sole trader, head of a peasant (farm) enterprise), SME category (microbusiness, small-sized business, medium-sized business), name, address (region, district, city, settlement),main activity code according to OKVED (Russian Classifier of Economic Activity Types), income, expenses, and average number ofemployees. The dataset includes revenue, expenses, and employee data from 2018 onward, with yearly granularity; all the other variables are presented from August 2016 onward, with monthly granularity.The article presents a reproducible methodology for the processing of raw FTS data and illustrates its application in thegeneration and exploratory data analysis of a dataset comprising firms in the agriculture, forestry, and fishery sectors. A referenceimplementation of the described technology is provided in the form of an open-source Python command-line tool. The paper demonstrates that the proposed technique enables the utilization of FTS open data to address a range of analytical and academic tasks in thefield of economic geography, particularly those benefiting from disaggregated information or requiring spatial resolution at the settlement level. Furthermore, the incorporation of geographic coordinates into the dataset facilitates direct mapping without additionalprocessing needed. The inclusion of municipal codes allows for seamless integration with official statistical information.