Assessments of the Effectiveness of the Croatian Fiscal Equalisation Model

No detailed analysis of the fiscal and economic inequalities of local units (at the municipality and city level) in Croatia has ever been published. The Government and the Finance Ministry have endeavoured by tax sharing, allocations of current grants and personal income tax refunds to palliate the differences in the fiscal capacities of local units. However, at the same time the fiscal capacities have not been properly calculated, because during the definition of the criteria for horizontal fiscal equalisation no care has been paid to the economic inequalities nor has there been proper establishment of the way local units belong to a special financing system. The paper, then, tests out the hypothesis that the existing Croatian model of horizontal fiscal equalisation is ineffective, for the Government and the Finance Ministry do not, with their poorly targeted financial instruments (personal income tax sharing, current grants and personal income tax refunds), manage to bring about palliation of the differences among the fiscal capacities of the local units, on the contrary, they tend to increase them