COMPARING REAL ESTATE (PROPERTY) TAX REVENUE WITHIN BUDGETS OF LARGE CITIES IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC IN 2015

Today. property taxes may first be viewed as a supplementary form of taxation for individuals - in addition to direct taxes, the revenue of which often flows directly to local and regional budgets. This paper aims to compare the budget revenue coming from real estate taxes collected by Czech municipalities with more than 25,000 inhabitants - not only in terms of their size, but also in terms of their socioeconomic status and stability, expressed as the median gross monthly income and the share of unemployed. The objective of this paper is to identify inappropriate disparities relating to the approach of the municipalities under review to using the real estate tax potential as it currently is the only tax in the Czech Republic, where the revenue may be influenced by autonomous decision-making process of individual municipalities. Our comparative study results confirm the first of the initial hypotheses concerning the active approach of municipalities to influencing the real estate tax revenue; however, the second hypothesis claiming the relation of the total real estate tax revenue per capita and the socioeconomic status of the relevant municipalities has not been confirmed. The paper also formulates specific recommendations - both in terms of the individual municipalities being compared and in terms of future research.