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Österreichs Föderalismus ist durch eine komplexe und oft wenig transparente Verflechtung von Aufgaben-, Ausgaben- und Finanzierungsverantwortlichkeiten zwischen den gebietskörperschaftlichen Ebenen gekennzeichnet, welche die gesamtstaatliche Steuerung beträchtlich erschwert. Um Effizienz- und Steuerungsdefizite zu mildern, wird in Wissenschaft und finanzpolitischer Praxis schon geraume Zeit diskutiert, den Finanzausgleich stärker "aufgabenorientiert" zu gestalten. Der vorliegende Beitrag diskutiert, ob und wieweit eine verstärkte Aufgabenorientierung mit Konstruktionsprinzipien des Föderalismus und der institutionellen Kongruenz kompatibel ist.

The FairTax project addresses the impact of EU national tax systems on widening socio-economic and gender inequalities as well as fiscal sustainability and tax fairness issues. This research will help improve economic stability while promoting economic, social and environmental sustainability.

The design of tax systems has a considerable impact on the personal distribution of income and wealth at the household and the individual level. Due to gender-differentiated socio-economic conditions, taxation may affect men and women differently. One of the most important areas of taxation is the personal income tax, which may have a gender-differentiated effect on work incentives and influence the distribution of paid and unpaid work between men and women. The paper presents an overview of the microsimulation results for selected provisions of the personal income tax system done with EUROMOD (a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union) for six selected Member States: Germany, Austria, Spain, Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Sweden.

In the current negotiations about the European Union's next medium-term Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for the period 2021 to 2027, the system of own resources financing EU expenditures plays a relatively important role. Currently, the EU budget primarily rests on contributions from Member States (VAT- and GNI-based own resources), whereas "true" own resources have continuously lost importance. In 2017, VAT-based own resources accounted for 12.2 percent of overall EU revenues and GNI-based own resources for 56.6 percent, while traditional own resources contributed the rather small share of 14.7 percent.

Nicht bloß Staatsschulden gelten als grundsätzlich kontraproduktiv, erhebliche Angst besteht auch vor einer Überschuldung der Unternehmen. Dabei wird übersehen, dass die Schulden gesamtwirtschaftlich stets so hoch sein müssen wie die Ersparnisse; solange die Ersparnisse steigen – und das ist bei steigendem Wohlstand zu erwarten –, müssen auch die Schulden steigen. Bei dem etwa 2-prozentigen Wachstum, das auch für die Zukunft zu erwarten ist, reicht der investitionsbedingte Verschuldungsbedarf der Wirtschaft nicht aus, um die gesamten Ersparnisse aufzunehmen. Der daraus resultierende Nachfragemangel dämpft das Wachstum und kann Rezessionen auslösen. Um das zu vermeiden, muss der Staat die überschüssigen Ersparnisse aufnehmen. Das ist unproblematisch, wenn die Verschuldung für wohlstandssteigernde Investitionen verwendet wird; darunter sind nicht bloß Investitionen in die materielle Infrastruktur, sondern auch in die immaterielle – Bildung, Gesundheit usw. – zu verstehen. An die Stelle der Schuldenregel sollte eine Investitionsregel treten.

This paper contributes to debates about the appropriate characterisation of heterogeneous investment types and to what extent different investment motives affect the responsiveness to corporate taxation. In particular, we employ and refine a methodology to better evaluate the tax elasticity of investment types. Using a combination of both firm‐specific and sector‐specific information from input-output tables, we discuss how to classify investment as non‐related, horizontal, vertical and complex types. First, we point out to what extent the resulting classification depends on assumptions made by the researcher. Second, we employ an ample set of classifications and find that non‐related investment reacts stronger to corporate taxation, whereas horizontal investment is less responsive, though, significant negative tax semi‐elasticities turn out for the subset of manufacturing industries. To address inherent characteristics of vertical and complex investment, we extend the methodology and find that, by and large, stronger business motives reduce the tax responsiveness of investment to a larger extent. Given the current debates about substantial corporate tax reforms, it is all the more important to recognise that corporate tax effects can vary fundamentally between countries, driven by country‐specific differences in their composition of industries and investment types.

This paper applies a DYNK (Dynamic New Keynesian) model to compare the traditional environmental tax reform for greenhouse gas emissions with a taxation scheme that taxes greenhouse gas emissions embodied in consumption within the framework of a unilateral policy of the EU 27. The embodied emissions of different commodities are taxed independently of their origin. The greenhouse gas tax rates applied are identical and new revenues are in both cases recycled via lower social security contributions of employers. The article shows the macroeconomic results, driven by the different impact of the taxation schemes on price competitiveness of EU 27 firms. These differences drive the leakage and show negative leakage in the case of taxing embodied greenhouse gas emissions. Both taxation schemes are also regressive for household incomes emphasising the importance of the choice of revenue recycling. In terms of emission reduction, we find the taxation of emissions embodied in consumption less effective.

The existing EU system of own resources financing EU expenditures does not make any positive contribution to the various EU strategies and policies implemented to cope with the manifold long-term challenges confronting the EU. It is against this background that the European Commission as well as the High Level Group on Own Resources, but also the European Parliament have (repeatedly) called for the introduction of tax-based own resources to partially substitute national contributions to the EU budget. Our specific contribution to this debate consists in the exploration of sustainability-oriented options for tax-based own resources which are able to support sustainable growth and development in the EU. Based on a concept of sustainability-oriented taxation in the context of own resources for the EU, we develop sustainability-oriented evaluation criteria to assess the suitability of specific candidates for tax-based own resources. We then present various options for tax-based own resources and estimations of their revenue potential. Moreover, a summary evaluation of these options based on our evaluation criteria is undertaken. Finally, we address implementation aspects. In particular, we briefly present and discuss potential models to implement tax-based own resources in the EU within the existing legal framework.

We apply the tradable-nontradable framework to evaluate the lack of convergence in labour productivity among EU Member States. Our results show that increases in overall productivity are primarily due to the tradable and not the nontradable sectors of production. The low productivity growth in peripheral EU countries before the crisis was accompanied by a sharp increase in the production of nontradables (i.e., nontradable goods and services) relative to other EU countries. We identify differences in the legal systems and the quality of public institutions, among others, as factors relevant for explaining the observed productivity growth differentials. Our findings have implications for the European Commission's macroeconomic imbalance procedures since the tradable-nontradable approach allows identifying patterns of real divergence on a disaggregated level.