H23 - Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and SubsidiesReturn

The goal of the paper is to asses differences between taxation of various tobacco products in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. When comparing the taxation of cigarette and fine cut tobacco, it is usually expected that one cigarette is equivalent to 1 gram of tobacco, while the European Commission uses a conversion rate of 0.75g. However, to accurately evaluate this disproportion, the real volume of tobacco contained in one cigarette was weighed using calibrated scales. Our experiment showed that the excise duties on tobacco are between 80-51% of the cigarette taxation in the Czech Republic; the range is between 78-47% in Slovakia and 67-37% in Poland, depending on the conversion rate. Even if it is highly unlikely that taxation of both products could be fully equal, we still believe that there is a potential for increasing taxation of fine cut tobacco, which could increase tax revenues by 0.7-2.7 billion CZK in the Czech Republic.

Cluster analysis is a method of multivariate data processing. It can be easily applied, for example, by means of statistical software. The article focuses on an application of cluster analysis in the field of taxation. The possibility of applying the method is compared for each tax or groups of taxes at two levels: by an individual state and between selected countries. It is also possible to determine, on the basis of cluster analysis, the impact of taxes on economic operators, which can be sorted according to various criteria (income, types of households represented by their members, etc.). An overview of studies in which the selected method of cluster analysis applied to selected datasets shows that cluster analysis has been supplemented by another statistical method or that the clustering process is repeated on a selected part of a set of objects or characters. The reason is usually better interpretation of results and complementary broader context.

Both the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic and the European Commission are going to impose new CO2 taxation. Within the scope of this news, it is interesting to focus on the current CO2 taxation in the European Union Member States. This article first presents some theoretical concepts regarding environmental and CO2 taxation, including a focus on the political tasks regarding CO2 taxation in the Czech Republic. Then both the methodology and data are presented; research in international databases is the key method. The third chapter of the paper deals with the research results; it focuses on current national systems for CO2 taxation in particular European Union Member States. Regarding the energy sector, the comparison of particular tax rates is provided. The study deals with the time period until the end of June 2012. The key part of the third chapter focuses on the CO2 taxation proposals by both the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic and the European Commission, including a comparison of the proposed CO2 tax rates. Finally, the results are discussed and proposals for both additional research and CO2 tax modelling are made.

The European Commission is going to discuss a revision of Directive 2003/96/EC, restructuring the Community framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity. The first proposals include a new energy taxation system, where the current energy tax is divided into two components - an energy component and a CO2 component. This article first presents theoretical concepts regarding environmental and CO2 taxation; then it concentrates on current national systems of CO2 taxation in European Union Member States with a focus on the energy and transport sectors. After making an overview of CO2 taxation, the article focuses on a comparison of national systems of CO2 taxation and indicates similarities in the taxes in their application in both the energy and transport sectors. The authors deal with all taxes that have their current tax base based on CO2 emissions or have CO2 emissions as one part of their tax base. The analysis is provided for a period until the end of 2009. Finally, the results of the comparison of CO2 taxation are discussed. The article also includes a brief overview of existing ex-post analysis of CO2 taxation in the Nordic countries of the European Union.

This paper reports results of the research concerning incidence of the value added tax in the Czech Republic over the period 1993-2004. The aim of our research was to analyse the impact of the harmonisation of the VAT rates connected with the entry of the Czech Republic into the EU on the distribution of the tax burden among households with different attributes including income. In our analysis we used 2004 Household Budget Survey data on consumption expenditures and various households' attributes. Considerable issue of our research was to estimate the VAT burden for each household in the statistical survey before and after the entry into the EU. We found out that the VAT burden of Czech households increased after the VAT rates harmonisation. Important result of our analysis was that the Czech VAT is progressive. The progressivity of the VAT is probably caused by a design of the tax when different items of household consumption are taxed at different rates including exemptions. Moreover, we found out that the Czech VAT was more progressive when the VAT was introduced than in time of the accession to the EU.