Tax legislation and complexity of tax law in the case of Hungary

Absztrakt (kivonat)

A country’s tax system is often accused of being too complicated and not understandable for the taxpayers. In certain countries, including Hungary, actions have been taken against that allegation. For example, simplifications of certain taxes or of the tax assessment procedure and support of the taxpayers along the processes. The purpose of this paper is to sum up the Hungarian experience regarding tax complexity. An important issue, which has been unfairly neglected so far in the domestic literature and researches. For this reason, I would like to describe the observable current situation and trends concerning our tax system, to highlight its strengths and deficiencies making it possible to be the subject of legal comparison to other countries’ legislation. I hope that the description and analyses will contribute to the setup of simplification targets for the future and achieve improvement in the diminishment of tax complexity in Hungary. After a short and general clarification about tax complexity and tax simplification, I will focus on the present Hungarian tax legislation and the measurements taken towards its simplification so far. In the next chapters I discuss in details tax legislation, tax fulfilments and finally the special case of simplified tax regimes applicable on business income.