Aktualny globalny kryzys finansowy i gospodarczy, a w konsekwencji spadek wielkości dochodów publicznych w wielu krajach, wymusił na państwach członkowskich Unii Europejskiej rewizję prowadzonych polityk podatkowych. Celem artykułu jest identyfikacja tych zmian oraz ocena skuteczności zastosowanych wariantów polityki podatkowej (pasywnej lub aktywnej) w kontekście procesu stabilizowania finansów publicznych. Artykuł został podzielony na dwie części, tj. teoretyczną i empiryczną. W pierwszej z nich przeprowadzono dyskusję na temat dotychczasowych badań nad skutecznością równoważenia finansów publicznych za pomocą instrumentów polityki podatkowej. W drugiej części opracowania zaprezentowano politykę podatkową realizowaną przez państwa członkowskie UE na poziomie narodowym, a także posługując się wnioskowaniem statystycznym dokonano oceny wpływu przedmiotowej polityki na równoważenie systemów finansów publicznych.
EN
The current global financial and economic crisis, and consequently the drop in public revenues in many countries has forced the European Union countries to revise their tax policies. The aim of the article is to identify these changes and assess the effectiveness of passive and discretionary fiscal policy in the context of stabilizing public finances. The first part of paper carries out a debate over current research on the effectiveness of balancing public finances by instruments of fiscal policy. The second part presents the tax policy implemented at the national level by EU Member States, and the statistical verification of the impact of this policy on balancing public finances of the analyzed countries.
Fiscal governance is defined as a combination of institutions, rules and norms that structure good governance in the area of fiscal policy. It can be named as the specific mechanism of coordination by using of tools such as: budgetary procedures (legislative fiscal rules), fiscal rules (numerical) and independent fiscal institutions/ fiscal councils. Fiscal governance focuses on how the fiscal policy is planned, approved, conducted and monitored, including the involvement of not only public bodies, but the business sector and civil society too. In this study, particular attention was paid to capturing the essence of the relationship between the qualitative elements of fiscal councils activity and its impact on stabilizing the public finances in the view of fiscal governance concept. During the last world crisis in the EU countries, an interest in establishing fiscal councils has increased. Before 2008 there were only seven institutions in the EU, while in 2014 there are already 19. The question is - are these institutions efficient in stabilizing public finances? Therefore, the main objective of the article is the assessment of the role of the fiscal councils in the coordination of the fiscal policy in the EU Member States. The conducted analysis verifies this role on the basis of theoretical deliberation of the current state of the art. The empirical research verifies fiscal councils’ dependence on fiscal balance of EU countries. Research was conducted on the basis of the European Commission, Eurostat and International Monetary Fund data sets.
The subject of this article is the presentation of tax expenditures as a type of public spending recognized as the off budget expenditures, as well as indicating their influence on Polish budget. This aim was proved in the way of comparative studies of theoretical concepts of tax expenditures and solutions applied in the countries reporting them. Tax expenditures strictly related to particular economic and social policy goals, are special tax provisions which partly or absolutely reduce tax burden of some groups of taxpayers, and in the result – diminish the tax revenue appropriately. The focus on these privileges arisen on the base of tax code is highly important in the current budgetary conditions while the huge part of countries is struggling with imbalances of public finance, and increasing public debts. The overall value of estimated tax expenditures in Poland amounted to 81.6 billion PLN in 2012. Comparing this value to the general government deficit in 2012 of 62.7 billion PLN, the scope of public spending realized out of budget procedure is clearly evident. In 2009-2012 the share of tax expenditures in total public spending amounted on average by 18.3%, and the adequate loss of government revenues was estimated at 26.1% of total tax revenue. Unfortunately this not always transparent part of public spending is out of public control and effectively limits the ability of proper and responsible fiscal policy.
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