Comparison of essential indicators related to the personal income tax burden in the EU countries

Abstract

Agriculture performs productive functions and is an essential provider of job opportunities. The labour force is one of the important factors affecting agricultural and food production. In general, the business environment affects, among other things, employers' and employees' personal income tax burden. Increasing the efficiency of business activity is inevitably associated with achieving the lowest possible costs. It can be concluded that labor and other personal costs represent, on average, 30-60% of the costs of the agricultural product. In general, taxation of individuals engaged in agriculture with personal income tax does not differ from taxation of individual's income in other sectors of the national economy. The paper focuses on assessing indicators related to the personal income tax burden in the EU countries for the years 2008-2020 based on the data from the Eurostat Tax Classification presented by descriptive characteristics. Achieved results are compared within the EU Member States and for particular countries with an EU-27 average. The West EU countries implement tax and fiscal policies compared to the East EU countries, which are not subject to significant changes in the tax system and thus ensure relatively stable tax revenues to public budgets regarding total taxes and employment income, including unchanged personal income tax rates. The East EU countries declare a lower tax burden of personal income tax. Still, due to the competitiveness of the countries, this burden is also being gradually reduced in the reviewed period in the case of the West EU countries, thus bringing closer unification of the tax policies. Slovakia achieved below-average values of all assessed indicators and at the same time high variability.