Tax Systems of Economies in Transition

Abstract

Originally, all tax systems of the formerly socialist countries very much resembled the tax system of the Soviet Union with its emphasis on taxing companies combined with a complicated system of turnover taxation where rates were often implicitly determined through administered pricing. Income taxes—in particular the wage tax—played an insignificant role in this context, but there was a payroll tax on wages that went largely unnoticed by taxpayers and had virtually no effect on labour supply or demand.¹