O38 - Technological Change: Government PolicyReturn

The application of the super-deduction of a tax as a support R&D in tax entities is primarily conditional on an assessment of whether the activity is in fact research and development. The aim of the paper is to analyse the structure of entities applying the super-calculation of research and development costs in the Slovak Republic in the period from 2015 to 2018 as well after the increase in the super-calculation rates in 2019. In the paper we mostly use quantitative statistical analysis. The rate of Slovak entities application of super-deduction in the individual years examined is low, despite a gradual increase in rates up to 150% (plus 100% year-on-year growth) in 2019. The assumption that the number of companies applying super-deduction would increase even with the increasing number of employees of the company has not been confirmed. During the period considered, companies with 10 to 50 employees applied 344 times, which was the cumulative maximum for the entire period considered. This category also prevailed in the individual monitored years. The sectoral structure of the companies is diverse, with the information technology sector predominating, followed by the engineering and electrical engineering sectors.

The EU ten years long strategy, Europe 2020, is coming up to its final assessment, including the interplay of both the competition and consumer protection in the internal single market. The pivotal legislative instrument in this respect, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (“UCPD”), was enacted even before Europe 2020 and was supposed to lead to a full harmonization of the protection against unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices, regardless whether misleading or aggressive, by the year 2007. The judiciary answer whether this has been achieved and supports the EU is to be learned from the competent court - Court of Justice of EU. A deep research is performed to provide data for a holistic Meta-Analysis which comparatively and critically assesses this strong, but not yet fully settled, case law consisting of almost 100 UCPD cases, and to expose it to the legislative wording, official EU statements and academic press. The key hypothesis suggests that the study of this case law in the light of the legislative wording, along with the official opinions of the EU and academic literature, provides valuable insights and suggestions about the status quo of achievements of the UCPD and Europe 2020 as well as the commitment of the EU and the attitude of the ultimate stakeholders, Europeans.

This article focuses on the fiscal incentives for research and development (R&D) in 20 selected EU countries. Although the single market is one of the preconditions of the EU functioning, the market for innovation and R&D within which fiscal incentives operate is very heterogeneous. The article's aim is to compare fiscal incentives and the generosity of tax incentives using the method of B-index (Warda 2001) and tax subsidy rates. Within the EU, only Germany, Finland and Estonia do not currently have a tax policy aimed directly at stimulating R&D. The results indicate the existence of substantial differences in provided incentives - from negative support or tax burden (in Germany, Denmark and Finland) to 43% tax subsidy (for SMEs in France). The most generous R&D tax incentives are in Portugal, France and Spain. Some countries differentiate the level of subsidy across firm types and offer more generous support for SMEs than for large firms, e.g. subsidy tax rates are 29% vs. 10% in the UK and 26% vs. 43% in France. In addition, differences are reported in the largesse of tax subsidy by profit scenario - the highest support is reported in a loss-making scenario in France for SMEs.