Fiscal revenues from taxation of income of corporations are more volatile than those earned from any other mayor tax. COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine pose additional threats to government inflows from this source, especially jeopardizing several EU Member States and Eurozone countries struggling with piling public debts, but at the same time maintaining common monetary policy. Therefore, there is a need for better management of revenues from corporate income tax in periods going forward. The aim of this study is to explain the impact of the level of budget inflows from taxation of income of corporations. It turns out that countries are indeed able to influence revenues from this tax by shaping the statutory tax rates. However, most determinants cannot be influenced directly by governments – such as GDP, level of globalization, R&D expenditures, total employment, age dependency ratio, or public debt. Although some of these phenomena are out of control in the short term, states may consider affecting their levels through appropriate economic policy led in the long run. This study is performed for panel data encompassing 16 potential determinants of corporate income tax revenues for all EU Member States from 1995 to 2020, which is the longest period ever considered for such a set of countries that concurrently includes first aftermaths posed to the economy by COVID-19.

Governments of EU Member States have been reducing statutory corporate income tax rates (“CIT”) for several years. What encourages them to take part in tax competition? The article discusses several issues which are in favor of lower CIT rates. They are selected based on their relevance. The study is performed with use of data available from applicable statistical bodies/literature and is based on literature review (especially in cases where required data is not available). It seems that the commonly raised issue of rivalry for capital in the globalizing world economy with highly mobile capital could be only one of a number of reasons for CIT rate depression. Tax competition is fueled by the various sizes of the economies of EU countries as well. The following important rationale may include the aspiration of governments to curb the local shadow economy. There are also some issues of a more theoretical nature that explain decreasing CIT rates. They include: (i) the necessity to accommodate CIT rate levels from the perspective of double taxation of dividends, (ii) the requirement to consider political responsibility of CI or (iii) the need to manage a deadweight loss. As a result of these challenges EU Member States often broaden the legal CIT base to maintain government revenues.

Theoretical background: Bank tax was introduced in Poland in February 2016. As a consequence, several banks with assets surpassing certain value need to cope with the additional burden. Purpose of the article: The aim of the research is to verify whether Polish banks that nominally are subject to the bank tax indeed shifted onto their clients most of the cost connected with this new levy and, thus, now these are the clients who effectively bear the burden of bank tax. Research methods:The analysis is based on monthly data for the years 2010-2021, for which a multilayer comparison of performance of banks subject to the bank tax was made from various perspectives: (1) before and after the introduction of bank tax and (2) with remaining banks not subject to a bank tax -which serve as a control sample. The analysis took into account the composition of Polish bank sector, while focusing on the development of: (1) revenues, costs and income from commissions and charges, (2) revenues and income from interest, (3) level of commissions and charges as well as interest imposed on different bank products, (4) banks profitability, (5) their balance sheet total and (6) ROA. Main findings: The analysis does not confirm increases in revenues of commercial banks and foreign branches following the introduction of the bank levy, whereas the profitability and ROA of these banks worsened significantly. At the same time, the performance of banks not affected by the levy did not deteriorate, which allows to conclude that banks did not manage to shift the cost of bank tax onto their customers. Conclusions are important primarily from the perspective of fiscal policy (they answer the question on effective tax incidence) and supervisory policy (to what extent the introduction of the tax erodes the performance of the banking sector, inhibiting the accumulation of capital determining the level of financial stability).

Aim:The aim of this study is to verify the hypothesis of decreasing volatility of budget revenues obtained from the bank tax (although still high compared to traditional taxes). The background for the research of the bank tax and conclusions resulting from it are other sectoral taxes existing in Poland, the revenues from which are, however, lower than those from the bank tax.Methods: The analysis of the variability of revenues from individual sectoral taxes in Poland in years 2016 -2021 was conducted using descriptive statistics, Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter and ANOVA approach. Then the Pearson correlation is examined to compare empirical data with figures resulting from the HP filter.

The European Union is not a homogenous area. This lack of homogeneity extends to taxes, which vary across jurisdictions. On average, Western Europe imposes significantly higher taxes on capital than New Member States, which joined the Community in 2004 and 2007. Often this fact is simply taken for granted. However, there are several arguments that can explain this variance. Although several of these arguments are well known and have been researched, they have not been assessed in combination, or used in a comparative analysis of corporate income tax (CIT) rates between EU member states. Because of interest in harmonizing CIT throughout the EU, the roots of divergent CIT is of particular and timely value. Therefore, this article we attempts to demonstrate the differences in CIT rates in the EU-15 and New Member States. In so doing the general characteristics of these country grouping is identified, and then discussed in the context of the taxation theory.