sonja engeli pippin and mehmet serkan tosun: tax harmonization in the european union and the eurozone: a multilateral analysis of tax systems financial theory and practice 40 (4) 437-461 (2016)
Keywords: tax harmonization, tax burden, European Union, eurozone, fiscal decentralization, tax systems
INTRODUCTIONTax policy management and harmonization have always been a topic of concern for the European Union and its member countries. The European debt crisis reinvigorated efforts within the EU to coordinate tax policies across the different member nations. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to take a new look at the effects of past tax policy coordination in Europe. More specifically, we examine countries within the EU and countries that have joined the common currency system (the eurozone) and are evaluating whether these tax systems are more similar, or are becoming more similar, to each other than they are to the tax structures of other countries. In our analysis we use several dimensions that measure the overall tax burden, the importance of different types of taxes within the tax system, the decentralization of tax collection, the tax administration and enforcement. We focus on tax collection (in relationship to other economic measures) as well as administration and enforcement because in our opinion although both factors are important in the evaluation of a country's tax policy, academic research, especially in the economics literature, has been less focused on these particular aspects of tax systems. In the second part of the study, we attempt to isolate factors that impact tax system similarities and differences as well as tax system harmonization within the EU and in eurozone member countries, with the ultimate intention to formulate a number of tax policy strategies.