H71 - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and RevenueReturn

The basis of neoclassical theory of fiscal policy is the significant rationality of economic subjects. Rationality results from the ability of these entities to optimize their decisions within a long time horizon, taking into account the activities of other entities, for example Government. An important economic entity is also municipalities and cities as representatives of local self-government. In most countries, fiscal decentralization has taken place in relation to local self-government which aim was reducing the local government's dependence on the state's financial management. Nevertheless, the state's incomes are still identifying as an important part of local budgets. The objective of the contribution is to evaluate the tax incomes of municipalities on the basis of selected indicators in the conditions of the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic in the period 2009 - 2016. The basis for the analysis was cumulative data from municipalities in the Slovak Republic (2 890 municipalities) and cumulative data from municipalities in the Czech Republic (6 271 municipalities) processed in MS Excel. The analysis showed that incomes from tax of personal income represent on average over the analysed period 70% on tax incomes for municipalities in the Slovak Republic and 22% on tax incomes of municipalities in the Czech Republic. Within the structure of the current incomes of municipalities in the Slovak and Czech Republic, tax incomes represent an important component. At the level of municipalities in the Slovak Republic tax incomes represent on average over the analysed period 53% on total current incomes of municipalities and in municipalities in the Czech Republic tax incomes represent 52% on total current incomes of municipalities. Within the analysed period, we register a faster increase of the total current incomes in the municipalities in the Slovak Republic in comparison with the municipalities of the Czech Republic.

The paper deals with the issue of fiscal decentralization in Czech Republic. The purpose of the paper is to measure the fiscal decentralization in Czech Republic in both aspects, the current state and recent progress, by comparing results with OECD-Europe unitary countries and CEE countries. The paper compares standard and modified decentralization ratios in time and geographically, using the IMF Government Financial Statistics and OECD Revenue Statistics data. The analysis shows that though the expenditure decentralization in Czech Republic is quite high, the degree of revenue and tax decentralization is low. This result is supported also by the comparison with OECD-Europe unitary countries average. After comparing the results with CEE countries average, we can see similar or higher degree of expenditure and revenue decentralization. Within years 1999 to 2008 Czech Republic showed a general tendency of expenditure and revenue decentralization to grow. However, after considering the conditionality of grants allocated to sub-central government, one can see a stagnation of expenditure decentralization. When the degree of taxing power of sub-central governments is considered, the decline of revenue decentralization and stagnation of tax autonomy can be seen.