This dissertation investigates whether consumers’ cross-border shopping due to interstate commodity tax differentials influence counties’ economic activity and states’ strategic competition in multiple tax policies. First, I examine how own and the nearest neighboring states’ commodity tax rates affect counties’ retail activity. Particularly, in contrast to many previous studies, I examine whether the distance to the state border influences the responsiveness of counties’ retail activity to sales and excise taxes of own and the nearest neighboring states. Since the costs of avoiding state commodity taxes are presumably lower along borders, the impacts of state commodity taxes on retail activity may be different for counties closer and further away from the state border. Considering retail establishments and employment of industries that are most likely to be affected by consumers’ cross-border shopping activity, I find that that the impacts of domestic and the nearest neighboring states’ sales and excise tax rates on counties’ retail establishments and employment depend on the distance to the state border. However, contrary to what would be expected, the impacts tend not to be very robust. Second, I investigate whether consumers’ cross-border shopping to low commodity taxed states influence state governments to engage in strategic competition in multiple tax policies. Previous works on fiscal competition document that state governments engage in commodity tax competition to gain cross-border shoppers. Specifically, the empirical research find that changes in neighboring states’ one commodity tax rate influence changes in a home state’s same commodity tax rates. However, these studies do not address whether changes in neighboring states’ one commodity tax rate also induce the home state to adjust other taxes, either other commodity taxes or possible income taxes. Using a panel of the United States’ state-level data for the period 1977−2002, I estimate the reaction functions not for a single tax rate but multiple rates. In this framework, I find that states react to neighbors’ lower tax rates on one tax base by changing rates on either the same tax base or/and other tax bases, thereby suggesting that states engage in strategic competition in multiple tax rates to meet their revenue goals.

The aim of the thesis was to analyse dependency between setting of the price level and gasoline quantum sold at a chosen distributor in the Czech Republic and in Poland. In the first part of the thesis, there are characterized price theory, tax theory, theory of state interventions, supply, demand and price elasticity of demand. In the second part, first, there is analysed whole market with fuels in both countries with their comparison. These markets have had slightly different development and they do have different market structure, because of the existence of the market leader in Poland. Second, there are analysed the data of the chosen distributor and analysed dependencies between price and quantum sold. Research showed that there is an existence of dependencies of quantum sold on both change of the absolute price and change of the relative price. These dependencies and the impact of the relative price change is more significant in the Czech Republic than in Poland.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the excise duty on tobacco products in the Czech Republic since 1993 up to the present time, especially the development of rates and revenues. Excise duty is imposed on tobacco products in the Czech Republic and also in the other European Union countries. Harmonisation efforts in the European Union and also fiscal need of Czech Republic cause frequent changes in tobacco excise duty rates, which conduces not only to change of tax collection, but can also bring some other related effects. In the theoretical part I first characterize the tax theory with a detailed focus on excise duty on tobacco products. Subsequently I define the meaning of excise duty on tobacco products, the principles and the mechanisms of the tax collection. In the practical part of the thesis I aim at analyse the evolution of the legal framework that affects excise duty on tobacco products and significantly affects the thesis in other sections. Further, I analyse the relationship between the rate of excise duty on tobacco products and tax collection and find out that the higher rate of excise duty not always led to higher tax yields. Finally I assess the effectiveness of the increase of excise duty on tobacco products and its impact on the consumption of tobacco products, illegal market and the public budgets.

This diploma thesis allows getting complex summary about important aspects of tax theory with special focus on excise taxes. The thesis is an analysis of excise tax on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products in the Czech Republic in the years 2000-2015. The analysis includes an assessment of the impact of rates increase of specific excise taxes on the state budget, the consumption of selected products and the number of detected tax evasions. The thesis demonstrated a positive correlation between the increase in excise taxes and revenues from alcoholic beverages and tobacco products. Increasing rates but also leads to a decrease in consumption of these products and has an impact on the number of detected cases of tax evasions in the area of excise taxes.

From 1st January 2014 the Czech Republic has to fullfil new minimum rates of excise duty on tobacco products according to requirements of the European Union. The aim of my thesis is to analyze the current state of tax policy on tobacco taxation and design the future rates with regard to the current structure of the consumption of tobacco products. The first chapter concerns mainly to the Czech legislation, the system of taxation of tobacco products, defines the basic concepts and principles, the second chapter focuses on the development and requirements of European secondary law governing the taxation of tobacco products, which is the means for the harmonization of excise duties in the European Union. There is some space given to the development of the rates of excise duty on tobacco products and revenues of this tax, including their evaluation. The final analysis compares alternatives of the tax rates as they could be set from 2014 following the development of the future exchange rate according to the Ministry of Finance forecasts and at different rates of value added tax.

The subject of the thesis is the fiscal and allocation function of selective excise taxes with focus on the Czech Republic. Due to the fact that the Czech Republic is among countries that apply "traditional excise duties" in their taxation mix, the subjects of which are assumed to have low elasticity of demand, the question is whether these taxes may perform the allocation function. Analysis of the fiscal function is based on the comparison of percentage of excise duties in overall tax revenues of public budgets, and on the development of this portion in time in the EU countries. Stability of revenues resulting from these taxes is verified by variability measures. On the grounds of the performed analysis it can be stated that excise duties in the Czech Republic represent stable revenue of the national budget. Allocation function of these taxes is analysed by graphic depiction and description of the trend of consumption of selected products and of the trend of prices in the period between 1995 and 2010. The trend of prices of selected products is estimated as the difference between interannual changes in the consumer price index for selected product groups and the overall consumer price index. This analysis did not prove unequivocally that the selective excise taxes imposed on the analysed commodities would be able to perform the allocation function.

This thesis summarizes the findings of the current application of mineral oil taxation policy in the European Union and individual Member States. Attitude and editing this field from the perspective of the European Union is engaged in a chapter called harmonization of taxes on mineral oils in the EU. Comparative analysis of tax revenues from mineral oils in the EU is the second chapter in which I deal with the taxation of mineral oils in the Member States and their tax revenues from energy taxes, which include revenues from mineral oil. Next chapter competition duties on mineral oils focuses on the development of tax rates on mineral oils, the mobility of the tax base and the related variability in rates over time and between countries. The content of the last chapter named Evolution taxation of mineral oils from the perspective of the European Union, the EU primarily intended changes in the taxation of energy products.

My thesis is aiming to answer the question what are the impacts of alcohol regulative legislation (especially the excise tax) on demand for it. The theoretical part presents various opinions and conclusions regarding the regulatory measures (apart from others Stigler, 1975) and the impact of alcohol price change on the demand for it (Becker, 1988 and his successors). Further on, individual regulatory measures, their development in time and basic reasoning for introducing of the measures are introduced in the work. In its analytical part, the thesis deals with comparison of states with different alcohol consumption levels and with different regulatory measures in effect; the work thus divides the EU-countries to groups of different traditions and level of control (the Global Alcohol Policy Report by WHO is used as a source of information in this regard). The data available for the selected countries are then subject to research regarding statistical relevance of the excise tax - consumption relation. The paper thus answers a question of alcohol demand elasticity and also the question of the differences in the consumption attributes in various cultural and regulatory conditions. As a source of the relevant information, analytical parts of OECD, WHO and CSU (Czech Statistical Office) databases are used in the paper.

Diploma thesis "Taxation of spirits in the Czech Republic and in the world" is focused on taxation of this comodity, legislative regulation and description of effects on society. This work is divided into four main chapters. The first two of them describe laws related to taxation of sprits. The main purpose of this section is to focus on the law of the Czech Republic and also on the regulation of the European Union, because the EU regulation has high influence on our country. Apart from those parts this section also contains history of excise duties in our country.The second chapter is oriented on tax and economy theories of excises. After that follows the second half of the work, where I am aiming on costs and revenues in relation with spirits (alcohol in general). The third chapter will describe the method of calculation of costs arising from consumption of alcoholic beverages based on standards of World Health Organisation. At the end of this section social costs concerning consumption of alcohol will be quantified and also compared on international basis. The last chapter will be about revenues from spirits excise duty and I will focus on significance of this tax in the Czech Republic and other OECD countries, tax rates of spirits and in conclusion I am going to find out, if a relation between tax rate size and amount of revenues from spirits excise exists.

Tax-setting policy belongs to the main duties of politicians from time immemorial. Since those times, people are questioning whether politicians, while setting taxes, are pursuing mainly interests of publi or their own. In this thesis, I am studying this question in the industry of alcoholic beverages, regulation of it's consumption and production. I am using two statistical models, simple model of partial equilibria and AIDS model (Almost Ideal Demand System), to estimate own price elasticity of demand for beer, wine and spirits in selected post-soviet countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russian Federation. Linear model with mixed effects is estimated to uncover the strength and direction of dependency of alcohol policy on own price elasticity of demand for alcoholic beverages in the above mentioned countries. Results show, that politicians of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania and Russian Federation set the alcohol policy in accordance with maximization of tax revenue hypothesis, while Latvians seems to be rather vote maximizers. I have expected the politicians in Baltic states to behave similar and also least populistically from studied countries. But my expectations were not fulfilled.