Therefore, the flat tax has not been a new fiscal policy instrument, while progressive personal income taxation was proposed by Karl Marx (Basham and Mitchell, 2008), as one of socialist policy proposals for the income redistribution, in order to achieve “social justice”. In the 19 th century most countries had the flat tax, while in the 20 th century many countries converged towards progressive taxation (Baturo and Gray, 2007). Emes and Clemens (2001) argue that flat tax means the single rate, including personal allowance, and excludes any tax deductions and exemptions.
In fact, the single rate system is not necessarily the flat tax in its pure form. The flat has mostly been related to personal income taxation, which replaces progressive marginal tax rates with the proportional, equally treating all incomes through the single rate. Therefore, a proper term would rather be “flat taxes”. It means a constant marginal tax rate for all personal and/or corporate incomes, and/or VAT (Kesner-Škreb, 2005). The flat tax has also been called „proportional tax“. The flat tax means a single tax rate on personal and/or corporate income and/or VAT, without any exemption or deduction, except personal allowance. However, rapid economic growth rate in these two countries needs to be seen from much broader perspective, as consequences of various structural liberalisation reforms, including the flat tax reform.įlat tax policies have already been implemented in the vast majority of Eastern European countries, with the aim of more simplicity, fairness and neutrality in the tax system, with savings and investment incentives. It can be emphasized the flat tax reforms in Estonia and Slovakia had positive effects on tax revenues and GDP growth. The article examines main features of the flat tax policy and brings a research overview of flat tax reforms in Estonia and Slovakia.
The political will is neccessary in order to stimulate growth. Flat tax reforms in Estonia and Slovakia can be the models for Croatian tax reform.
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