Tax Expenditures: A Theoretical Review

Tax expenditures are an instrument frequently used when a government wishes to achieve certain economic and social effects. But because of the increasing number and scope of tax expenditures, their proper use, quality of administration and record-keeping have become a major challenge for the tax authorities and the whole of the government. The article considers and explains very diverse forms of tax expenditure such as reliefs, tax deductions, tax allowances, tax exceptions and special rates of taxation and the ways in which they are defined and calculated. The key problems in the analysis are the absence of a single definition and of methodology for the calculations; these ultimately make it impossible to compare tax expenditures between or among countries

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL TAXES IN EU AND CROATIA

In order to protect environment, some states use different fiscal and parafiscal instruments that can be financially significant. One of these instruments are enviornmental taxes, which have a positive influence on the environment. The aim of this paper is to analyse types, importance and financial impact of environmental taxes in EU and Croatia. Analysis of an average revenue share from environmental taxes in GDP had shown that in the period between 2000 and 2013 the biggest average was recorded in Denmark (4.52%) and Netherlands (3.45%), and the lowest in France (1.97%) and Spain (1.82%). In Croatia there are eight different types of environmental taxes and charges. Their total share in revenues in the state budget was 3.45 % of gross domestic product in 2013 .In the period between 2008 and 2012 budgets of the Republic of Croatia collected the highest amount of tax revenue from energy tax, while natural resources taxes were negligible

Tax Expenditures in Croatia

The tax system of the Republic of Croatia contains a large number of very diverse kinds of tax expenditures whose the declared aim is to achieve certain social and economic objectives. This paper considers all the items that constitute tax expenditures in Croatia, within the systems of the personal income tax, corporate income tax, and real estate transfer tax and value added tax. The objective of the article is to determine the real level of tax expenditures per form of tax in the 2001-2004 period. We hypothesised that the tax expenditures in the analysed forms of tax are both high and growing, which was ultimately borne out, for almost all the analysed items in the tax forms considered are growing

Can the efficiency of the Croatian tax authorities be improved?

The goals of this article were to determine whether the efficiency of tax authorities in Croatia improved over the period 1997-2012 and to identify how their efficiency can be improved in the future. According to our research the administrative costs of taxation in Croatia, as a percentage of GDP, decreased slightly over the past fifteen years but still remain above the EU average. Thus, there is a need to reduce the administrative costs of taxation, first by identifying and abolishing nuisance taxes that raise very little revenue and have high administrative costs. Second, special attention should be devoted to analysing and reducing the service expenses of tax authorities (especially IT expenses and expenses for telephone, mail and transportation services). The main problem related to research into administrative costs in Croatia over a longer period is the lack of relevant and reliable data, and hence the Croatian tax authorities should collect more data and release them to the public

Public participation in the budgetary process in the Republic of Croatia

The International Monetary Fund’s fourth review of the Fiscal Transparency Code from 2014 sets out the principle of participation according to which the government must provide citizens with a brief, simple and easily understandable overview of the implications of all budgetary measures and with an opportunity to participate in the budgetary decision-making process. The Fiscal Transparency Code must be implemented in Croatia, which is an IMF member state, so this paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to point out the importance and economic effects of public participation in the budgetary process, identify the normative mechanisms of public participation in the budgetary process, and look into what they comprise of and whether they can help in achieving “participation in budgetary decision-making”, as provided for by point 2.3.3. of the Code in Croatia. It is assumed that the Croatian legal system provides various normative mechanisms of public participation in the budgetary process, which enables the implementation of the participation principle set out in the Code. These mechanisms are, however, not specific to the budgetary process itself, but rather represent general normative mechanisms of public participation, which apply in the legislative process as well

The Politics of the Budgetary Process: The Case of Croatia

Proračun je mehanizam upravljanja državom koji je iznimno važan za svako gospodarstvo i za stanovništvo svake zemlje. Proračun je rezultat proračunskog procesa, čijim su se razvojem razvile proračunske funkcije koje najbolje opisuju što je proračun i čemu služi. Proračunski proces ozbiljna je ekonomska i politička aktivnost u svim suvremenim državama. Vrlo je složen i sastoji se od nekoliko faza, u kojima ključne uloge imaju različiti čimbenici. Proračun je rijetko istraživana tema u Hrvatskoj, te se upravo stoga u radu daje pregled dosadašnjih istraživanja politike proračunskog procesa u svijetu te se posebno opisuje proračunski proces u Hrvatskoj.The budget is a mechanism of governing a state that has a very important role for any economy as well as for the inhabitants of each country. The budget is the outcome of the budgetary process. With its development, many budgetary functions have been developed. These functions best describe what the budget and its purpose are. The budgetary process, which is extremely complex and consists of many phases, is a serious economic and political activity in all modern countries. In each phase various factors play important roles. This topic has seldom been researched in Croatia and therefore the paper offers an overview of previous research devoted to the politics of the budgetary process in the world, particularly describing the budgetary process in Croatia