J. For. Sci., 2023, 69(10):427-437 | DOI: 10.17221/51/2023-JFS

The forest land tax systems in Slovakia and PortugalOriginal Paper

Klára Báliková ORCID...1, Natacha Jesus-Silva ORCID...2, Noémia Bessa Vilela3, Michaela Korená Hillayová ORCID...1, Jaroslav ©álka ORCID...1
1 Department of Forest Economics and Policy, Faculty of Forestry, Technical University in Zvolen, Zvolen, Slovak Republic
2 Department of Economics and Management, Portucalense University, Porto, Portugal
3 OPHIZ, Inątitut pravnih znanosti, raziskave in razvoj na področju prava, Maribor, Slovenia

Forests cover almost one half of European land. Therefore, land taxes, including taxes from forests, are essential for a municipality's income. The land tax system is implemented on different levels, mainly nationally and locally. Therefore, many land tax features are settled by federal law, and others differ according to the local tax administrators. The objective of the paper is to compare the current laws and principles and the implementation process of forest land in Slovakia and Portugal. We have selected countries from different geographical areas of Europe. Even though the forest compositions and forest ownership differ, we aimed to identify whether the forest land tax systems can be similar. We analysed the legislation and strategic documents on the national level that helped us to describe the land tax system and its general features (e.g. taxpayer, tax rate, tax base, exemption options, tax period, or penalties). In both countries, the national tax law governs the tax implementation and settles any basic processes related to tax collection. The municipalities have the right to revise both the tax rates and exemptions. The results also show that forest owners in Slovakia have more options for tax exemptions than in Portugal.

Keywords: forest property; local government bodies; municipalities; property taxes

Received: May 2, 2023; Revised: July 27, 2023; Accepted: July 27, 2023; Prepublished online: October 20, 2023; Published: October 30, 2023  Show citation

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Báliková K, Jesus-Silva N, Bessa Vilela N, Korená Hillayová M, ©álka J. The forest land tax systems in Slovakia and Portugal. J. For. Sci. 2023;69(10):427-437. doi: 10.17221/51/2023-JFS.
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