Local governments’own revenues in international practice

Abstract

Topicality: The degree of efficiency of the collection of local taxes and fees by local public authorities is determined by several factors: local economic development, fiscal effort in the context of expanding the tax base, the size of projected expenditures, etc. In this sense, local taxes and fees, as a component of the own revenues of the budgets of the administrative-territorial units, are necessary to be analyzed from the point of view of their applicability, administration, as well as their collection. The existence of shortcomings in the payment management system contributes to the extension of the possibilities to evade the payment of local taxes, as well as to the formation of debts to local budgets, which leads to the need to adopt effective measures aimed at increasing the profitability and efficiency of the tax administration. Purpose: Analysis of the European experience regarding the administration of own revenues by local public administrations; examination of own revenue sources which are the major source of revenue for LPAs in international practice. Research methods: Application of general empirical research methods, such as: the analytical method, through which the essence of the researched problem was reached; the method of systemic analysis, with the help of which the constituent components of the own revenues of the administrative-territorial units were researched; the method of synthesis, applied to establish the connections between the researched phenomena; the method of quantitative analysis, which was applied to the analysis and interpretation of local public finance indicators. Results: In some countries, only the real estate tax (United Kingdom and Ireland) is part of the local tax category, at the same time, in a number of states (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia) the real estate tax is the major source. own revenue for LPA. Also in other countries such as Latvia there are no local taxes - according to the legislation in force in Latvia there are only state taxes, and the tax revenues of local public administrations are shares of four state taxes. The land tax is also a local tax. Its purpose was to regulate land use, stimulate more productive land use and provide a broader basis for local government revenues. JEL: H11, H20, H71, H72.