Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2016, 64(5), 1699-1708 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun201664051699

Classification of EU Countries in the Context of Corporate Income Tax

Alena Andrejovská1, Monika Hudáková2
1 Department of Finance, Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Kosice, B. Němcovej 32, 040 01 Košice, Slovak Republic
2 Department of Small and Medium Entrepreneurship, Economics and Management Institute, School of Economics and Management of Public Administration, Furdekova 16, 851 04 851 04 Bratislava 5, Slovak Republic

Taxes are an integral part of human society, regardless of the economic, cultural and political disparities between the countries. Income taxes of legal entities represent significant part of the budget, what is the reason for their timeliness and public discussion. The aim of the paper is a classification of the EU countries into economic groups and an assessment of the grouping these EU member states based on common characteristics in the area of corporate income taxes. Common features are determined by the structure of selected macroeconomic indicators: public debt, government budget balance, the overall tax burden, economic performance, nominal and effective tax rate. The analysis compares a range of methodological approaches of hierarchical (Ward linkage and median linkage), and non-hierarchical clustering (k-means clustering and fuzzy cluster analysis). The results of cluster analysis grouped the monitored countries into five clusters based on common characteristics as the corporate income tax rate, economics performance and the level of public debt. The result of the analysis shows that despite of ongoing there are still differences present, which are present in the ratios of countries' development as well as in the economic policies of the particular countries.

Keywords: tax revenues, public spending, overall tax burden, economic performance, tax rate

Prepublished online: October 31, 2016; Published: November 1, 2016  Show citation

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Andrejovská, A., & Hudáková, M. (2016). Classification of EU Countries in the Context of Corporate Income Tax. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 64(5), 1699-1708. doi: 10.11118/actaun201664051699
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