Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 20th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Public Finance Author(s) Lucie Sedmihradska University of Economics of Prague Praha Czech Republic Title Property tax in the Czech Republic and Slovakia since 1993 File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Lucie Sedmihradska Abstract In early 1990´s the belief that fiscal decentralization will take place in the Central and Eastern European countries together with the other fundamental reforms like price liberalization or privatization was very common. Twenty years of experience show, however, that decentralization of the revenues lags far behind decentralization of expenditures or budgeting. Despite the characteristics of property taxes which make it an almost perfect revenue source for local governments, its importance remains low. The objectives of the proposed paper are to compare the development of the property tax in Czech Republic and Slovakia since their establishment in 1993 with special focus on the autonomy granted by law to the municipalities and on the actual usage of this autonomy. The first part of the research will be a legal analysis of both systems and their comparison. The evaluation of the actual usage of the fiscal autonomy will be done based on two samples of municipalities. The sample of Slovak municipalities is given by the Business Alliance of Slovakia, which collects and publishes information on property tax rates in about 60 biggest municipalities. The sample of Czech municipalities will be selected so that the size (i.e., number of inhabitants) structure will copy the size structure of Slovak municipalities.
