Optimum design of a tax system depends on numerous factors and differs from country to country. A variety of studies claim that raising consumption taxes while at the same time lowering taxes on labour and capital can stimulate the economy's growth forces. At the same time, other studies note that tax burden and tax structure would have different impacts on economic activity for different countries and periods and under varying circumstances. In this respect the main purpose of this paper is to provide one more estimate and a few more suggestions for growth-conductive taxation. The study is focused on the impact of tax structure on the economic growth in the EU-28 member states for the period 1996-2013. The descriptive analysis is focused on the cross-country differences in terms of total tax burden and design of tax structure, while the empirical analysis studies the impact of taxation on the economic growth through regressions on pooled panel data. The conclusion is that tax structure based on selective consumption taxes, taxes on personal income and property is more supporting to the economic growth.

The purpose of this article is to study the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth in Bulgaria for the period 1995–2018. The descriptive analysis is focused on the general trends in fiscal policy and tax structure. The influence of government spending and taxation on economic growth is studied through regressions on time-series data. The empirical estimates prove that taxation is a more reliable instrument of fiscal policy than government spending in terms of a small open emerging-market economy. The dilution of the effect of public spending is probably caused by the high negative values of the current account balance that have been maintained for long periods. Thus, when domestic supply is weak, government expenditure cannot stimulate domestic production, as supply is dominated by import goods. Public investments demonstrate a negative effect on economic growth, which suggests a low productivity of investment spending. A factor of great importance is the level of corruption, which is strongly correlated with government investments, but is harmful to their efficiency. The Bulgarian tax system demonstrates consistency with economic growth. The receipts from value-added tax seems growth-conductive. The decrease of the corporate income tax rate exerts a positive impact on economc performance during the analyzed period, while personal income taxation demonstrates a negative effect. Property taxation has no significant relation with the growth of the Bulgarian economy.

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth in six small new member state of the European Union, namely Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, and the Baltic states-Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for the period 2000-2010. The empirical analysis is based on the multiple regression method. The conclusion is that fiscal decentralization is a reliable instrument for an increase in budget performance efficiency in the small new member states of the EU. There is a positive relationship between the subnational share of total government expenditure and revenue (used as measures of fiscal decentralization) and economy growth. At the same time during the analyzed period the subnational revenue and expenditure presented as ratios to GDP have negatively affected economy growth in the analyzed countries. The relationship is not linear and the effects of changes in the ratios are not proportional. Because of that the policies promoting decentralization must be built on the base of precise analysis. However, the empirical analysis of fiscal decentralization is still at an early stage and it is premature to draw definitive conclusions from these preliminary results.

This study aims to estimate the impact of three fiscal instruments (direct tax revenue, indirect tax revenue and government consumption expenditure) on the economic growth of ten new European Union member states from Central and Eastern Europe– Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. We examine the hypothesis about the effect of expansionary fiscal policy on economic growth. The study employs a vector autoregression and annual Eurostat data for the period 2007–2019. Four control variables (the shares of gross capital formation, household consumption, exports in GDP, and the economic growth in the euro area) are included in the model to account for the influence of non-fiscal factors on economic growth. The empirical results indicate that the real output growth rate in the ten new member states of the European Union is negatively affected by direct tax revenue, while economic growth in the euro area, exports and gross capital formation are positively related to economic growth. The results also imply that government consumption and indirect tax revenue have no significant impact on the growth rate of real output of the ten studied countries from Central and Eastern Europe. It may be inferred that policymakers in the new European Union member states can raise economic growth by encouraging exports and investment and by lowering the share of direct tax revenue in GDP. From the three analyzed fiscal instruments (direct taxes, indirect taxes and government consumption expenditure), only one has proven to be effective in the case of the new member countries.

It is generally accepted that municipal property is a basic prerequisite for financial autonomy and administrative independence of local authorities. In Bulgaria, municipalities received ownership rights from the Constitution (1991) and this regulation was further confirmed by the Law on Local Self-Government and Local Administration (1991). In 1996 municipal property was finally settled with the adoption of the Law on Municipal Property and the Law on State Property. In the late 1990s local governments received significant amounts of assets from the central government. The process was accompanied by abuses of administrative authority, corruption scandals, and financial mismanagement. Two decades latter, Bulgarian municipalities have different types of assets, but the effectiveness of local financial management is still a topical issue. This paper aims to analyse and estimate the financial performance of nine enterprises owned by Blagoevgrad municipality with Z-Score model. The analyzed period covers the years from 2006 to 2020. The results indicate that municipal enterprises can achieve profitability while providing a wide range of services to the local community.