Tax evasion in the countries of Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

This article presents estimates of tax evasion in all Former Yugoslavian countries for various years and taxes during the last two decades. The scarcely available fiscal and national accounts data only allow us to provide approximate estimates. Nevertheless, they are a useful contribution to the existing literature in a unique sense since tax evasion is estimated for the very first time for some of the countries. The main aggregate assessment of tax evasion is based on data for shadow economy and tax burden. In addition, this research finding provides more specific measures of evasion for some single taxes that are based on data discrepancies from different sources. Lastly, we derive implications for the controls of tax evasion and the observed tax collections.