Luxury tax perspectives: The evidence of the Republic of Belarus

Abstract

The study is dedicated to the reasons for luxury tax implementation into the national taxation system. The purpose of the research is to study the emergence and experience of applying the luxury tax in various countries in order to determine the feasibility of introducing such a tax in the Republic of Belarus. Authors’ conclusions and findings have been presented against the background of the analysis of digitized texts on tax and bibliometric and scientometric analysis of the scientific field of taxation. As a testing ground for making our conclusions in terms of lessons learned from past historical experience and real economic background, the Republic of Belarus was chosen. Possible reasons for the introduction of such a tax were considered, as well as an analysis of the market for luxury goods in the Republic of Belarus and the demand for them was conducted. We have drawn some parallels between the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation to reach a reasonable conclusion. For this purpose, the Russian luxury goods market (premium car and real estate markets) was analyzed based on available statistics for the years 2020-2022. As the most politically controversial tax that can be not as efficient as income taxes and have unintended consequences, luxury tax was examined from the point of international experience and historical perspective. Examples of luxury goods throughout history and in real life together with historical references to the implementation of this tax were presented. The effectiveness of luxury tax and its impact that depends on a variety of factors (tax rate, types of goods and services being taxed, economic conditions, etc.) together with the modern concept of luxury tax with national specific was evaluated. Considering the situation in the Republic of Belarus, although during recent years there has been a budget deficit and there is a necessity to find new sources of state income, we didn’t find any reasons for the implementation of such a tax into the national taxation system. These types of taxes are mainly imposed in highly developed countries where people can afford “luxurious” goods and the variety of these goods is higher. In the case of the Republic of Belarus, there is a trend of decreasing the number of people whose purchasing power would allow them to buy luxury goods and the real disposable income of Belarusians has also declined, making it less likely that Belarusians will spend money on the consumption of luxury goods.