H22 - Taxation and Subsidies: IncidenceReturn

The article aims to compare the Member States of the European Union in the field of social insurance over the selected period. In this context, it is necessary to identify the trend of changes in the period 2007–2019. The article answers two questions. First, whether there is a growth in the share of social insurance in the tax systems or not. The second question concerns the approximation of the Member States in the field of social insurance. The Eurostat database is a source of indicators that represent social insurance in the tax system of the individual Member States of the European Union. We used Ward’s method of cluster analysis to evaluate the annual results. Three indicators are subject to cluster analysis. The result of our work comprises four groups of the Member States of the European Union. Each group consists of similar states. Our results confirm that the country’s historical position and traditions influence the established social insurance system. The European Union law ensures social security coordination. It mainly affects migrants.

The aim of the paper was to analyze some behavioral effects, especially the effect of "hidden" tax, the "preference of progressivity" effect and some kind of "preference of short period incidence" effects of citizen. The effects predict the citizens will prefer hidden taxes to direct levies. The behavioral experiments revealed that additional information concerning the "hidden" tax and tax progressivity influences the preferences of respondents. They started to prefer the different ways of financing the public goods, those more progressive. Effect of "hidden" tax substantially diminishes after the prompting of information concerning the true tax incidence of corporate income tax. At the beginning the corporate income tax was preferred all over the groups, but later it lost its dominance and the alternative personal income tax became the favorable way how to finance of public goods. It is evident the relevant information concerning the real tax incidence and the redistributional effects of particular tax measures can significantly change the citizens view how to construct the preferred tax mix. It might also affect the process of political negotiation and reasoning.