Tax Revenues and External Shock. How Covid-19 Influenced Public Revenues in Poland and Czechia

ABSTRACT

The unprecedented driving force of economic events in 2020 was, paradoxically, an uneconomic phenomenon - the COVID-19 virus. In order to overcome the unfavorable period, public policies around the world have sought, and in fact continue to seek, various support schemes. On the one hand, such schemes include restrictions on economic activity to prevent the spread of the virus, on the other hand, they impose a burden in the form of a loss of public revenue and, at the same time, a burden in the form of an increase in public spending. Therefore, based on public revenue data this paper seeks to capture the nature and extent of the impact of pandemics on public revenues, especially taxes in a mid-term period 2017-2020 in Poland and the Czech Republic. Our analysis reveals that the rate of fulfillment of public revenues during the year in the crisis year 2020 does not differ much from the last years of the pre-crisis years. In terms of tax collection, pandemic affected the collection of personal and corporate income tax the most.