H22 - Taxation and Subsidies: IncidenceReturn

This study evaluates monetary effects of an increase in Czech tax credit by CZK 500 per month for the second child and CZK 900 per month for the third and each additional child. The analysis uses a microsimulation model and survey data SILC 2011. The decline in government revenues from taxes due to these changes is estimated to be CZK 4.7 billion annually, with almost one third of the total budgetary costs (CZK 1.5 billion annually) going to families with children in the upper half of income distribution. The average household with more than one child would save approximately CZK 7,300 per year. While the poorest households with more children would gain on average only CZK 2,900 per year, wealthier households with more children would gain CZK 7,000 to 9,000 per year. There is a high share of low-educated and often single-earner households among the poorest households, who gain the least from this change. Increasing the child tax credit would also lead to an increase in the already very high tax differentials between men and women and differences in the taxation of childless people and married couples with children.

The Czech Parliament approved a wide-ranging reform of direct taxes in 2011. Absent other legislative changes, the reform will come into force on January 1, 2015. We evaluate its impacts on the tax burdens and the average and marginal tax rates in a representative sample of Czech individuals and households. The main impact of the reform is a reduction in the average tax rates for the self-employed in the 5th through 10th income deciles, most frequently by 4.4 percentage points. The variation in the change in the average tax rates among the self-employed in low incomes deciles is large and varies between minus 5 to plus 5 percentage points. The reform would reduce the taxes for most employees only slightly but it would increase the average tax rate by up to 5 percentage points for employees with earnings exceeding four times the average wage. The effective marginal tax rates faced by the self-employed would drop most commonly by either 4.4 or 10-11 percentage points, while the effective marginal tax rates faced by employees would remain unchanged. The impacts on the households are highly heterogeneous depending on the share of income from self-employment in the household's total income. The reform would reduce the budget revenues by approximately CZK 19 billion.

In January 2008 the Czech Republic introduced the environmental taxation based on the directive 2003/96/EC, restructuring the Community framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity. Environmental taxes are imposed on electricity, solid fuels and natural gas. This paper discusses impacts of environmental taxation in the Czech Republic in the period after its implementation, particularly impacts on price indexes of energy intensive sectors, structure of energy products consumption in the economy and production of CO2 emissions by sectors ranking among EU ETS. The paper is divided into six parts. The first part is the introduction where both the main target of the paper and four hypotheses for testing are formulated. The theoretical problems which are connected with the impact of taxation and tax incidence are discussed in the second part. The third part describes the ideas and expectations of lawmakers regarding environmental taxation implementation, precisely European Commission, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic. In the fourth part authors describe the methodology and data, provide results of ex-post analysis based on both linear and non-linear correlation analyses. The next part deals with the discussion of the results and the hypotheses testing. The last part, conclusion, focuses on the main ex-post analysis findings and formulates the recommendations.

In this paper we are presenting an analysis of shift of tax burden from income onto consumption. The analyzed consumption tax is value added tax, while destination principle is applied. The result of analysis is finding that the contemporary tax policy in the Czech Republic is suboptimal from the point of view of tax burden distribution between production factors and consumption. Theoretical findings are confirmed by analysis of data from European countries. Every percentage above the EU27 average of consumption taxes share on total tax quota results into increase of GDP growth by 0,04% to 0,05% p.a. The Czech political "elite" determines the fiscal policy to be popular and recent surveys confirmed Czechs' dislike towards consumption taxes, especially value added tax. Therefore the huge cost of the Czech tax system - high taxation of wages and low value added tax - can be viewed also as agency cost.

The Czech Republic has introduced new energy taxation in connection with implementation of the directive 2003/96/EC, restructuring the Community framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity. New energy taxes are imposed on electricity, solid fuels and natural gas, with term of initiation on 1st January 2008. This paper discusses impact of new energy taxation on sectors NACE in the Czech Republic, particularly on prices of production. I have created the simple short-term price model for the Czech Republic, which is based on input-output methodology by Leontief. The paper is divided into six parts. The first part is introduction, where are formulated both the main target of the paper and two hypotheses for testing. The theoretical problems, which are connected with the impact of taxation and tax incidence, are discussed in the second part. The third part describes possibilities of analysing and modelling in the area of changes of tax system and tax rates. In the fourth part I describe the methodology and then I am creating the short-term price model for the Czech Republic. The next part consists of the main results, emerged from the price model and the two hypothesis testing, with focus on energy intensive sectors of NACE. The last part, conclusion, summarizes the main results and formulates the possibilities of additional research in energy taxation area.