EXPLORING THE NEXUS BETWEEN TAX REVENUE TRENDS AND SOCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

Abstract

The purpose of the research: to analyze the main tendencies of the tax revenue and social contributions in EU countries, to study the hypothesis concerning convergence of the annual growth rates of the total tax revenue (including social contributions) to the GDP in European Union countries during the last decade and to build the predicted values for the total tax revenue (including social contributions) as GDP percentage in EU countries. The research was conducted based on the time serious analysis) and forecasting method to predict data values of the total revenue to the GDP. The analysis presented in the research has shown that tax revenues in the main tax categories displayed a corresponding pattern, with a differing fiscal lag for direct taxes, indirect taxes and social contributions. Correlation analysis has shown that many countries of EU essentially correlate ratio of the total tax revenues to the GDP. Using the presented models for the time series of the total revenue to the GDP in Eiropenean Union counties, the predicted values were obtained. The research has shown that some countries have common characters of the total revenue, and some gruop of countries has varies. Regardless of the declaration of the common economic policy in EU, as well as levy system in EU, the research has noticed some differences in the total revenues concerning the GDP trends. The impact of possible convergence in tax burden policy in EU countries explains these differences.In order to harmonize tax policy and to increase the fiscal role of taxation in the EU countries, such measures are proposed: application of unified procedures and conditions of administration of taxes and other budget revenues; differentiation of tax rates and establishment of the upper limit of their size; introduction of a unified tax base; differentiation of objects of taxation with the purpose of increase of tax revenues to the budget and avoiding increase of tax burden for population and others.