engleski

Eastern Croatian Taxpayers’ Perceptions of the Tax System

The main research aim is to establish the degree of Eastern Croatian taxpayers’ agreement with different statements concerning particular taxes in Croatia relevant for individual taxation – inheritances and gifts tax, value added tax (extending the scope of the lower VAT rate to entire food), possible future bank tax and junk food tax as well as mostly personal income tax including its tax base (taxable incomes and allowances) and its rates (only one rate as an alternative to more rates). Its purpose is to identify the current taxation problems relevant not only for (Eastern) Croatia, but for Central and Eastern Europe in general. The paper also aims to establish the difference in Eastern Croatian taxpayers’ perceptions in comparison with the rest of Croatia, including the causes of such differences and their implications. The sample of individual taxpayers from Eastern Croatia was stratified using demographic data available for Eastern Croatia. The questionnaire was filled in using our interviewers’ phone calls. The data are analysed using descriptive statistics and the Mann-Whitney- Wilcoxon test. Taxpayers from Eastern Croatia strongly support the introduction of bank taxation and extending of the scope of the lower VAT rate to cover all food (as allowed by the EU harmonisation rules). The strongest disagreement is related to the inheritances and gifts tax as well as introduction of interest taxation. For all of the statements, there is a statistically significant difference between taxpayers from Eastern Croatia and taxpayers from other parts of Croatia. These differences are explored in the paper in detail as well as their causes and implications.

Eastern Croatia, taxpayers, tax system, questionnaire, tax preferences

Zbornik indeksiran u Thomson Reuters - Web of Science, EBSCO, EconPapers