The economic impact of reduced value added tax rates for groceries

The value added tax represents one of the most important sources of state budget revenues of EU Member States. The basic value added tax rate is in the EU currently between 15% in Luxembourg to 27% applied in Hungary. The revenues from this tax represent an average of 17.5% of all tax revenues of EU countries and create an average GDP of 7.0% (year 2016, EU 28). As revenues from value added tax represent a stable income of state budget, the legislative changes in the system of value added tax, mainly its reductions as well as its imposition on groceries, can significantly influence further macroeconomic development. In the last year, the government of the Slovak Republic implemented changes in universal indirect taxing in such way that in addition to the standard value added tax rate of 20%, the Act No. 268/2015 on Value added tax adopted in 2016 a decreased value added tax rate of 10% on selected groceries, in order to support domestic producers and reduce the tax burden of low-income and middle-income groups. According to the European Commission (2007), the reduced rate of value added tax in selected cases has its justification and importance in the country's economy. The aim of this paper is to analyse the economic impact of the applied reduced value added tax on food in the Slovak Republic in the context of household expenditures and revenues of the state budget.