FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION AND FISCAL AUTONOMY IN THE EU MEMBER STATES

Abstract

In the process of fiscal decentralization sub-central governments have gained access to different fiscal resources, but the autonomy in setting the taxes is a key issue when analyzing the degree of decentralization. In this paper we calculated an index of tax autonomy for the EU Member States based on the OECD methodology of classification of sub-central taxes according to the degree of control over these taxes. We have shown that the design of intergovernmental fiscal relations is significantly different among the Member States, and taking into consideration the discretion over sub-national taxes provides a valuable insight on the fiscal decentralization design.

Keywords

• fiscal decentralization, tax autonomy, intergovernmental fiscal relations