SUMMARY
Ensuring the financial autonomy of local government bodies is an important component for creating conditions on accelerating the development of individual territories of the country and increasing the efficiency of their use. Creation of mechanisms for providing sufficient amounts of financial resources, activities of the above-mentioned authorities require thorough research in this area, especially within the study of foreign experience by building budget systems and organizing redistribution of financial resources between their individual components at different levels. Experience of federative countries is particularly significant in this area. The outlined confirms the relevance of the chosen topic of the article. Accordingly, the following goal of the research was set – to identify structural features and trends in the transformation of budget revenues at the local level of public administration in federative countries from 2000 to 2015. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set: to determine the revenues structure of local government in federative countries; to analyse main tendencies of the change of the specified structure during 2000–2015; to apply cluster analysis in order to identify groups of countries that are similar to the processes of revenue generation of local government budgets in federative countries. Methodology. Statistics for assessment of budgetary revenue’s breakdown in several federative countries by the IMF data was processed, assessment of breakdown transformation with the use of the Ryabtsev index was done, and similarity and distinctions of revenue’s breakdown in different countries with the use of the hierarchical cluster analysis was investigated. Outcomes. It was found that among the analysed federative countries, the own tax revenue has a significant share (higher than 30% in a breakdown of all revenue) only in Belgium, Germany, Australia, Canada, and also in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the inter-budgetary transfers take the main position in financing of local budgets in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Russia, and Brazil; own non-tax revenues in local budgets are significant only in Australia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was proved that in fifteen years only in Russia, the opposite type of revenues breakdown sources was created and it demonstrates shifting to the centralization of public finance. It was also revealed that in 2000, the countries’ cluster structure by breakdown sign had obviously expressed group character, but further it evolved from a group structure to the step structure displaying specifics in the formation of local budgets’ revenues in each country. Practical implications. Practical outcomes of the study are analytical information on the structure of revenues of local government in federative countries, which may be useful by introducing new mechanisms for increasing the financial autonomy of local self-government. In addition, the obtained data may be useful for other not federative countries in terms of studying peculiarities of the formation of budget revenues of local government and analysis of the impact of such revenues on the socio-economic development of separate territories. Value/originality. The conducted study is relevant given the importance of developing local government in federative countries and providing it with the necessary financial resources for independent self-functioning. The data obtained during the research implementation are of practical value and can be used in the process of implementing measures to increase the financial independence of budget revenues at the level of local self-government in federative countries. This research was carried out within the framework of the scientific work performing of the Department of Finance, Banking and Insurance of the Chernihiv National University of Technology on the following topics: “Financial stability of economic systems in crisis management” (No. 0115U001149) and “Theoretical and applied aspects on financial provision of the national economy” (State Registration No. 0113U002741).