Suchergebnisse

Die Einführung des Europäischen Binnenmarktes beinhaltet als umsatzsteuerliche Kosequenz die Aufgabe des Bestimmungslandprinzips und die Übernahme des Gemeinschaftsprinzips. Damit verbindet sich allerdings auch eine Verschiebung der Umsatzsteueraufkommen zwischen den beteiligten Ländern. Angesichts der Forderung, hinsichtlich der einzelnen nationalen Mehrwertsteueraufkommen den Status quo weiterhin aufrechtzuerhalten, und damit in bezug auf das Umsatzsteueraufkommen der jeweiligen Länder das Bestimmungslandprinzip weiterhin gelten zu lassen, bedarf es eines sogenannten Clearing-Verfahrens, um die Rückrechnung vornehemen zu können. Der Bericht geht bei seiner Untersuchung zunächst von grundsätzlichen Überlegungen zu Binnenmarkt und Umsatzsteuer aus. Weiterhin wird ein Clearing auf der

The recent process of political and economic transformation in Eastern European countries has not only contributed to the decentralisation of political structure but also significantly enhanced the fiscal autonomy of municipalities in these countries. In this context many similar types of public activities have recently been assigned to local governments, and some taxes were also declared to the local taxes. To be sure, this type of fiscal decentralisation has caused some additional problems, particularly for safeguarding the quality of publicly provided goods and services and for co-ordinating intergovernmental fiscal transfers between the central and local governments. For instance, some criticise that many small-sized municipalities in the transition economies have suffered from financial bottleneck

Intergovernmental transfers can be either conditional or unconditional with regard to the autonomy of local governments in spending such financial means. Although fiscal decentralisation has recently been quite pronounced in Eastern European transition countries, the dominance of a purpose-and project-oriented, down-flow transfer system is apparent. In adopting abundant matching grants, the central government in these countries will further try to efficiently lead the provision of local public goods and services, which could, however, make the process of carrying-out legally assigned public activities by municipalities less 'self-governing'. On the other hand, the west German municipal resource allocation system ("Kommunalausgleichsystem") was implemented also in the eastern part of the country after unification, which primarily provides unconditional transfers for local governments. Furthermore, in the case of adopting the so-called principle of parallel development of fiscal capacity between the state and municipalities ('Gleichmäßigkeitsgrundsatz'), as Saxony already has done, the intergovernmental transfer ratio is no longer exogenously but endogenously determined, which better guarantees a just resource allocation between the two jurisdictions. Since the subsidiarity principle backed by sufficient own fiscal resources (from local taxes, in particular) and unconditional transfers appears to gradually gain significance in providing local utilities, this study shows the recent Saxon experience with unconditional transfers, which can be a helpful yardstick for the future political discussion aimed at improving the fiscal develolution system in many Easten European transition economies.

Intergovernmental transfers can be either conditional or unconditional with regard to the autonomy of local governments in spending such financial means. Although fiscal decentralisation has recently been quite pronounced in Eastern European transition countries, the dominance of a purpose- and project-oriented, down-flow transfer system is apparent. In the context of unification, the west German municipal resource allocation system was also implemented in the eastern part of the country, which provides primarily unconditional transfers for local governments. Furthermore, in the case of adopting the principle of parallel development of fiscal capacity between the state and municipalities, as Saxony already has done, the intergovernmental transfer ratio is no longer exogenously but endogenously determined, which better guarantees a just resource allocation between the two jurisdictions. Since the subsidiarity principle backed by sufficient own fiscal resources and unconditional transfers appears to gain significance in providing local utilities, this study shows the recent Saxon experience with the unconditional transfers, which can be considered for the future fiscal devolution process of Eastern European transition countries.

The recent process of political and economic transformation in eastern European countries has not only contributed to the decentralisation of political structure but also significantly enhanced the fiscal autonomy of municipalities belonging to these countries. Although the degree of self-governing abilitiy of municipalities seems to vary from one country to another, many similar types of public activities have recently been assigned to local governments, and some taxes were also declared to be the so-called local taxes. To be sure, this type of fiscal decentralisation has caused some additional problems, particularly for safeguarding the quality of publicly provided goods and services and for coordinating intergovernmental fiscal transfers between the central and local governments in an efficient way. For instance, some criticise that a large number of small-sized municipalities in the transition economies have suffered from the financial bottleneck and have not been able to receive financial support from the central government that was necessary for their economic development. However, such a fiscal devolution trend appears to continue in these countries, in parallel to the ongoing democratisation and decentralisation. This paper primarily deals with crucial issues surrounding the impact of national fiscal policy and the regulatory framework on local government's expenditure behaviour and their ablility to mobilise necessary revenues (i.e. tax income, grants and municipal borrowings) under the particular consideration of the institutional cooperation with the central government and of the (still existing) less-well developed financial market in Poland, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The recent process of political and economic transformation in eastern European countries has not only contributed to the decentralisation of political structure but also significantly enhanced the fiscal autonomy of municipalities in these countries. In this context many similar types of public activities have recently been assigned to local governments, and some taxes were also declared to be local taxes. To be sure, this type of fiscal decentralisation has caused some additional problems, particularly for safeguarding the quality of publicly provided goods and services and for co-ordinating intergovernmental fiscal transfers between the central and local governments. For instance, some criticise that many small-sized municipalities in the transition economies have suffered from financial bottleneck and have not been able to receive sufficient financial support from the central government. However, such a fiscal devolution trend appears to continue. This study primarily deals with issues surrounding the impact of national fiscal policy and the regulatory framework on local governments expenditure behaviour and their ability to mobilise necessary revenues under the particular consideration of the institutional and administrative co-operation with the central government and of the less well-developed financial market in Poland, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Das Ministerium für Inneres und Sport hat das ifo Institut mit der Überprüfung des kommunalten Finanzausgleichssystems beauftragt. Dabei steht das horizontale Ausgleichssystem im Vordergrund der Untersuchung. Allerdings sollten auch Fragen des vertikalen Finanzausgleichs analysiert werden. Im Rahmen dieser Untersuchung zur Überrprüfung der einzelnen Problemkreise wurden sowohl wissenschaftliche Argumente wie auch pragmatische Gesichtspunkte wie die politische Akzeptanz, die Probleme bei der Umsetzung und die immer wieder auftretenden statistischen Restriktionen, berücksichtigt. Als Fazit der Untersuchung läßt sich festhalten, daß das saarländische Finanzausgleichssystem weitgehend dem gegenwärtigen Stand der Finanzausgleichstheorie und -praxis entspricht, in dem nur wenige Regelungen einer gewissen Modifizierung bedürfen.

The size of tax evasion and fraud appears to be increasing steadily in the EU. To a certain extent, the completion of Single Market has further encouraged firms' and households' evasive behaviour in paying value added taxes in the EU Member States, whereas such efforts have traditionally been most pronounced in the field of corporate and personal income taxation. This study primarily deals with the quantification of the VAT evasion and fraud in the EU. On the basis of the national accounts data, it suggests a novel way of estimating the annual amount of hypothetical VAT revenues for the individual EU countries. The relation between the calculated hypothetical and the (current) collected revenues in a fiscal year largely determines the extent of VAT evasion and fraud of a country, when the time-lag problem between the creation of tax liability and the VAT collection in cash terms can be adjusted.

At the end of June 1999 the intra-EU duty free shopping was abolished among the fifteen member nations. The opponents of this resolution argued that such a tax-free sales sector created jobs EU-wide and hardly reduced the value added and excise tax revenue of individual countries. In their opinion, duty free trade not only contributed to the reduction of travel fare within the EU but could also be characterised as a supplement to the normal retail trade for some products. Such 'old' ideas are increasingly popular in some Eastern European EU candidates where they are preparing for the introduction of the Single Market and EU membership in the near future. This study primarily shows that the arguments mentioned above were neither significant enough nor conclusive to maintain the intra-EU duty free shopping. Furthermore, the abolition of such tax free sales was approved in the EU in order to ensure the allocation efficiency of the VAT and excise tax system within a single market. Several arguments against the intra-EU tax free shop-ping examined in the study provide some helpful policy orientations for EU membership candidates.