Long-term sustainability of the use of taxes as an economic policy instrument: on the example of European Union member states during the economic crisis

This paper is focused on the evaluation of the tax institutes potential; respectively changes as a possible tool for economic crisis signs reducing in the case of the European Union. In fact, the crisis has affected the tax policy of the European Union as well. According to the EU summit in November 2011, stated that the need for a “pragmatic coordination of the tax policy for the fiscal consolidation and the boost of the economic growth.” Currently there are set limits for individual types of taxes in the European Union, which personal income taxes remain in the competence of national governments, while indirect taxes are in the center of the attention and efforts for their harmonization. Corporate taxes should promote the Free Capital Movement and should not cause the harmful competition among individual countries, and social and pension systems should not be a barrier of free setting and investment in EU member states. The article carry out the description based on the abstraction and analysis and evaluate Commission’s proposals in the field of taxes according to economic criteria (the CCCTB, financial transaction taxes, and also the so-called carbon tax and the Green Paper on the future of the VAT). The article focus on the analysis of VAT rates changes during the economic crisis and study the relationship between the growth rate of GDP and VAT parameters using statistical methods (correlation analysis especially). As a conclusion, both identification of the mediated relationship between the economic crisis and the increase of VAT rates needed for the improvement of relations between the revenue and expenditure side of public budgets, and possible ways of estimates quantification of the new tax institutes introduction into practice can contribute to the ongoing discussion about the importance of deepening of the tax policies coordination in the EU, respectively the use of taxes as an instrument of the economic policy in general, as well as the sustainability of the usage of this tool.