MSME taxation in transition economies : country experience on the costs and benefits of introducing special tax regimes

The paper analyzes the design of simplified small business tax regimes in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and the impact of such regimes on small business tax compliance. Although many approaches for tax simplification exist, a general trend in the region is to offer small businesses the option to be taxed based on their turnover instead of net income. The study finds that many of the regimes in place are overly simplistic and neither take into account fairness considerations nor do they facilitate business growth and migration into the standard tax regime. Although revenue generation is not a main objective of such regimes, low revenue performance and the risk of system abuse by larger businesses should be issues of concern. More attention should therefore be devoted to improving the design of simplified regimes and monitoring their application. This will require in particular a more profound analysis of the economic situation and the tax compliance challenges in the small business segment and increased efforts to improve the quality of bookkeeping.