The article discloses the peculiarities of the regulatory legal acts of the Russian Empire during the First World War as an important source for the study of the history of the taxation policy of the imperial government. The entire legal array, which provided taxation policy, was divided into two groups: 1) regulatory legal acts that formed the general tax policy of the Russian Empire and was applied to the entire territory of the empire; 2) the «occupational» regulatory legal acts that implemented the taxation policy of the government of the Russian Empire in the occupied territories of Galicia and Bukovina. The analysis of the imperial tax legislation proved that the critical financial situation of the Russian Empire was due to the imperfection and backwardness of the taxation system when the country started the war. It was determined that a considerable array of tax legislation in the period of participation of the Russian Empire in the Great War was aimed at increasing the tax pressure and contained the norms concerning: raising the rates of certain pre-war taxes and duties, abolishing tax breaks, increasing the number of taxpayers and objects of taxation, or introduction of new temporary military taxes. The attention was paid to the essence and reasons for the adoption of the Law of the Russian Empire «On State Income Tax» dated on April 6, 1916, which had to mark the beginning of the tax reform. Studying the mechanism and peculiarities of the regulatory support of taxation in the occupied territories of Galicia and Bukovina, it was established that non-compliance with the norms of international law led to the introduction of a hybrid taxation system that combined elements of the Austrian and Russian tax legislation As a consequence, it led to chaotic and unsystematic tax collection. Such a state of taxation showed a significant increase in tax pressure on the local population and the predatory nature of the Russian taxation policy in the occupied territories

taxation policy; taxation; regulatory legal acts; the Russian Empire; Galicia; Bukovina; World War I; Military General Governorate of Galicia