TAX REVENUES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: DEVELOPMENTS
AND ECONOMIC ISSUES
European CommissionPaper completed: March 20071. Introduction.
Tax structures and levels of revenues have always been monitored with scrutiny and interest. First, taxes
are the main financial source of most States for financing of many desirable policies. Second, taxes – by
altering relative prices – distort economic choices – some of these distortions being desirable, others not.
Furthermore, taxation may be necessary to correct market failures. Third, taxes need public acceptability,
which can be difficult because taxes reduce available income or consumption, they can be levied on
various tax bases and structures, and taxes can be powerful instrument of redistribution. Overall, the
levels and structure of taxation systems have a microeconomic as well as a macroeconomic impact,
shaping many aspects of the economy. The macroeconomic consequences of taxation are materialised by
its stabilisation, redistribution and (dis)incentive effects. Tax systems must contribute to ensuring
budgetary discipline. This is particularly the case in the context of the EMU because the loss of the
monetary policy instrument for individual countries requires better functioning product, labour and
capital markets, as well as enhanced automatic stabilisation potential of fiscal policy. Tax policy will
impact both.
Over the last years, tax collection has been impacted by structural developments and growing challenges.
Economic integration and the increasing mobility of factors of production, in particular capital, have
made it easier for tax bases to relocate and taxes are one element determining this choice. In the face of
the growing challenges of ageing and globalisation, Member States have been progressively more
concerned by the perspective of vanishing tax bases or the progressive shift of the tax burden from
mobile to immobile tax bases which could ultimately threaten their capacity to finance their social
model(s). Taxes are indeed closely linked to the objectives of the welfare state. These objectives can be
conveniently classified according to the following categories: efficiency of the economy, supporting the
living standards at all stage of life or in case of adverse events, reducing inequalities, promoting social
integration, protecting citizens, and ensuring an intelligible and abuse-free administration^1. To meet these
aims, taxation can be used in different ways^2. First, taxation can be used as a source of financing for
public interventions such as the production of public goods, the transfer of income or the provision of
insurance with compulsory membership. Second, taxation can also be used to directly correct market
failures or to promote (resp. discourage) the consumption of merit goods (resp. demerit goods) for which
positive (resp. negative) externalities are not internalised.
(^1) See Barr (1992) for a review. An alternative classification deals with the three 'R's' of the welfare state: Redistribution
between people, Risk and insurance, and Reallocation over the life cycle (de Mooij, 2006).
(^2) Note that besides taxation, regulation, public production, income transfers and subsidies are other alternative or
complementary instruments in the hands of governments.