Non-tax Burden Management as a Manner of Increasing Fiscal Competitiveness – The Experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the new system of improving fiscal transparency in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and its ability to contribute to increasing fiscal competitiveness. BiH has a specific system of fiscal federalism and decentralization, with four fiscal jurisdictions of disproportionate jurisdiction. By introducing the fiscal register as a public document, fiscal jurisdictions seek to increase fiscal transparency, discourage the introduction of new non-tax levies, reduce existing non-tax levies and eliminate parafiscal levies. In this paper, we investigated whether the new legislation allow for the achievement of these goals. Using the method of qualitative analysis, we concluded that rigorous conditions for entering public tax in the fiscal register and the legal provision that there is no obligation to pay any public tax if it is not entered in the fiscal register are a realistic basis for increasing fiscal transparency. A higher level of fiscal transparency should strengthen the interest of businesses and citizens in the non-tax burden and increase pressure on the government to reduce it. In order for a higher level of fiscal transparency to have an impact on increasing fiscal competitiveness, reforms of government institutions and changes in the way public money is spent are necessary.