Internationaler Vergleich der Systeme zur Besteuerung der Land- und Forstwirtschaft

Due to its overwhelming significance among taxes on earnings in the agricultural and forestry sector, the analyses are primarily concentrated on the international comparison of effective income tax burden in the selected EU Member States as well as Canada, the United States and Japan. In this context, it is particularly stressed that, instead of applying actual earnings, the determination of taxable profits (or income) for small-sized agricultural firms takes place on the basis of standard, blanket amount of earnings in several investigated countries. In addition, national rules on real property tax are introduced in a systematic way. Furthermore, on the basis of legal information existing in the individual countries, an attempt is made in the second step to quantify the impact of such different tax systems on the basis of a model calculation. Although the rules about public subsidies for agriculture and forestry in the EU appear to be largely harmonised, the varied tax treatment of such transfers as extra earnings leads, ceteris paribus, to different effective tax burdens in the individual countries. This fact, in turn, suggests urgent needs for further political discussions on the EU level. The study consists of two parts. The former provides a general, comparative overview of taxation in agricul-ture and forestry in the investigated countries. The latter, with the so-called country reports shows the relevant laws and rules in the individual countries in more detail.