Significance and Determination of Fees for Municipal Finance

Peter Friedrich (), Anita Dehne, Chang Woon Nam and Anita Kaltschuetz

No 1357, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The idea of fiscal decentralisation has become increasingly fashionable world-wide. But every country has unique features of the intergovernmental fiscal system. In general municipal expenditures are rapidly growing in European countries. On the other hand local tax increases are not easily enforceable at present, whereas the local fiscal autonomy is unlikely to be guaranteed as long as municipalities are strongly dependent on down-flow grants. In such a fiscal-stress situation an improvement of local fiscal capacity can be achieved from the increase of fees. Four European countries were chosen to survey the recent development of municipal finance: Britain, Germany, Poland and Switzerland. This paper firstly identifies and highlights the similarities and differences in municipal finance in an international context. Secondly it theoretically examines the possibility of enhancing fiscal autonomy of local governments through determining optimal fee level which leads to an increase of revenues from this revenue item.

Keywords: fiscal decentralisation; local expenditures and taxes; fees; shared taxes; intergovernmental transfers; municipal borrowings; Poland; Britain; Switzerland; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-geo, nep-pbe, nep-tra and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1357

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