THE FISCAL FEDERALISM AND THE DECENTRALIZATION PROCESS AT COLOMBIA

This article tries to establish how the economic theory of fiscal federalism has influenced in the process of Colombian fiscal decentralization. The text is divided into two parts: the first part explains the economic approach of fiscal federalism; and the second one, analyzes the most important rules of fiscal decentralization, since 1968 to 2011, in order to identify essential characteristics of fiscal federalism. The article concludes that even if the tax reform of the last forty years have been influenced by technical missions that made recommendations based on fiscal federalism, can't be said that the legislatives changes obeys strictly to this economical approach. This because in the Colombian decentralization the emphasis is not exclusively to give fiscal autonomy to the different territorial authorities, but the redistribution of income and wealth through transfers to finance social costs as health and education.