Own Revenues in the Public Sector

Abstract

The private and public sectors are complementary sectors of any economy. There is a clear interdependence between these two sectors, not competitiveness and exclusivity. At the same time, there are certain differences between these two sectors, which are conditioned by the ownership structure, business goals and the like. The public and private sectors have different roles in world economies. In developed western economies, which did not have “excursions” into socialist (planned) economic organization, private property has a long tradition of existence and, accordingly, plays a much more important role in the economic structure of the country. Underdeveloped countries and countries in transition, such as the Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina, introduced the institute of private property after the collapse of socialist organizations. For this reason, as well as for many other reasons, the public sector in underdeveloped and developing countries has a more significant role in the overall economic structure than in developed western countries. The influence of the state on the economy is realized through various mechanisms. In most developed and transition countries, the public sector redistributes about 40% of GDP through taxes and public spending, and in some countries even more. In modern economies, the state is the largest employer employing a significant percentage of the workforce. We defined the research problem of this paper with the question: can and to what extent public institutions can generate their own / own revenues and what is the tax treatment of realized revenues? The subject of the research was the legal basis and a comparative overview of the current legislation in the field of taxes from the point of view of the public sector and the point of view of the private sector. In the first part of the paper, we analyzed the concept and role of the public sector, looking at certain characteristics of the sector in the European Union (EU) and other neighboring countries. In the continuation of our work, we dealt with our own revenues in the public sector in the Republic of Srpska, with a special focus on educational institutions. Guided by this problem, we analyzed the tax treatment of own revenues generated by public institutions in relation to the tax treatment of revenues within the private sector. According to the previous, and the discussion we had in the last part of the paper, we conclude that the basic hypothesis is: public institutions have the right to generate their own revenues, although they are not registered to perform revenue-generating activities, but tax revenues should be treated as and in the private sector, true. To conclude, public institutions are left free to generate their own revenues. However, the results of the conducted analysis raise certain questions, the answers to which need to be sought in future research. What measures need to be taken and what steps do public institutions need to take in order to use the recorded own revenues in order to improve the education system? Therefore, we suggest additional research on this topic, in order to offer quality answers to the questions asked.