Small and Medium-Sized Businesses in Albania Prefer Progressive Tax or Flat Tax

Abstract

A progressive and flat tax system is widely debated not only in public finance but usually as a political issue in Albania. A progressive tax has been applied in Albania in recent years. Many researchers in Albania have studied the effect of the flat and progressive tax on public finances, but what we will bring in this paper is the point of view with which small and medium businesses in Albania consider the effect of the tax on the in­come of their companies. Based on the results of the survey of Structural Statistics, for the year 2021, 99.8% of active enterprises are SMEs. This important fact intrigued us to study the effect of taxes on SME income as well as their opinion on each tax. In order to see the effect of the tax system, the analysis of the data collect­ed from 200 SMEs (through questionnaires) for the main indicators such as progressive taxation, and simplified tax on small business was carried out. The descriptive analysis of the data collected as well as the confidence inter­val estimation for the VAT rate preferred, are going to generate some con­clusions and recommendations for policymakers.