Abstract. The current state of economic development and innovations' support often brings small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at the forefront of government fiscal policy. Various policy measures targeted at SMEs' support and development necessarily include measures on promotion of innovations within small business. However, despite substantial efforts undertaken by the authorities to increased financial injections into this area, development of innovations by small businesses faces many obstacles. Statistics on the registered small and medium enterprises shows that the sharp rise of entrepreneurship observed in the early 1990s changed for the stagnation towards the end of the decade and sluggish dynamics of the present time. Unfortunately, as practice shows, measures taken so far do not stimulate significant changes in the development of small business. Moreover, differentiation of small businesses between regions is only increasing, as it is manifested through substitution of divergence for convergence. Our paper analyzes the legal framework regulating small business development as well as state of innovations within SMEs so that to identify the main indicators

In the process of rapid exchange of information and cross-cultural communication, translation is playing an increasingly important role. It is regarded as a constructive skill-enhancing tool. The paper reports the results of the research work aimed to evaluate the use of the cooperative learning (CL) technique for teaching translation in authentic classroom situation at a non-linguistic institution of higher education. We have been able to explore the value of the translation methodology "Cooperative Work Procedure" proposed by Prof. Gerding-Salas C. (Gerding-Salas, 2000). Research on collaboration compared group performance to individual performance as well as identified interactions within heterogeneous groups. The current study proves that both students and educators may benefit from CL. The paper focuses on the advantages of this method. The research used both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings show that CL technique is highly suitable for the use in the translation class. Learning process evolves dynamically; the discussion stimulates criticism involving a fuller range of translation solutions and improvements and may lead into related topics for debate and discovery.

The creation of systematically organized informational and methodological resources for providing training in the context of higher education digitalization is the subject of interdisciplinary research. The paper aims to study the dependence of learning outcomes in a digital educational environment on factors such as the dominant intellectual modality, digital intelligence, educational paradigms, teaching tools, meeting educational needs, and a technologically comfortable environment. The authors take an integrated approach to study the issue of training autonomy, its dependence on the level of formation of the optimal patterns of students' cognitive behavior, on the cognitive load increase in the process of self-regulatory learning, and on the skills of metacognitive self-instruction for regulating cognitive processes. The authors conclude that in building the information and educational environment, it is necessary to take into account the assessment of the cognitive potential of the educational capabilities of students. Another conclusion is that the informational architecture of the informative content should perform the function of an external trigger of internal motives to develop sustainable models of students' cognitive behavior.

The paper deals with the problem of exploiting the potential of digitalization at scale by organizations in the age of information technologies and advanced analytics of data. Being at the forefront of social progress, universities inspire managers, training staff and students to reset their working, thinking and leading initiatives and embrace digital transformation of the educational environment. The study aims to research the modern thought on transformational leadership befitting universities’ distinguished title of growth engines. The methodological framework comprises modern sociological, psychological, management and complex systems science theories of leadership. The paper analyzes organizational leadership models, explains their weak and strong points, formulates the terms of realizing the leadership phenomenon in the context of digitalization, studies the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation’s experience in introducing the elements of the ‘digital university’ model. The findings support the idea that generative leadership is attainable through inter-layer and inter-cluster interaction of all educational environment members. The paper suggests a mechanism of transforming hierarchical models into generative leadership models. The theoretic and practical significance is the validation of interconditionality of digitalization and a leadership ecosystem as a variety of communications, complexity of interrelations and integrity of functioning of educational leaders.

International experience of the largest countries' economies of the last decade demonstrates that the use of Value Added Tax (VAT) in taxation of consumption is used more actively and is gradually squeezing out the sales tax. In most countries of the world VAT ensures between 12 and 30% of stable budget revenues. Taking statistical data selected with the help of the Ordinary Least Squares method as a basis, changes in the ratio of VAT received by the budget to GDP in the economies of different states for the 1995 -2015 period were studied. The best ratio of the economic data was revealed in the Czech Republic and Mexico, where sustainable growth of the ratio amounted to 0.0008 -0.0009 respectively. A significantly lower correlation of the data was noticed in Austria and France, the correlation is conspicuous for its negative value of the regression coefficient. The research we have undertaken in relation with several states has shown the following consistent pattern: an average value of the share of VAT is less (by 10%) dependent on the development and state of the economy of the countries we have compared than (over 60%) on the taxation rules established by laws on each state (the use of tax incentives, lower tax rates, etc.). Our research of VAT effect on the economies of countries has revealed a number of specific problems, which weaken the mechanism of collection and payment of the tax. Consequently, to solve the macroeconomic problems of VAT, additional measures aimed at organizations' revenue growth should be undertaken. Another area should be the improvement of the tax incentive and exemption system as well as the removal of existing possibilities of tax evasion. These measures will allow the government to adjust the basic rate downwards in the middle term. IntroductionLooking back into the history of the tax, VAT failed at the start of the XX th century, because the society was not ready for the introduction of a tax collected at all stages of production and covered a significant part of sales operations of goods (works, services). For example, in the 30 sec of the XX th century a research by GerhardColm "The Ideal Tax System" was the first to say that VAT corresponds to the current stage of capitalism development, because the state has turned into a partner, which ensures production process, from a guarantor of ownership (Couzin, 2014). According to Joseph J. Thorndike, the government ensures private production by laying roads among other things, the state raises the efficiency of entrepreneurship through education and Ravil Gabdullaevich Akhmadeev et al.