Abstract:

Studying and analyzing public finance revenue and taxes are very essential conditions of the country's economic policy. Without taxation any state cannot exist, therefore taxes are one of the most important components of a state's fiscal policies especially during the pandemic period. Taxes are the main source of revenue for the national budget and when redistributed it generates public expenditure. Because the government does not create factual products or services, the implementation of the various functions of the state requires immense funds. Therefore taxes are a really important and significant source of the public finance’s revenue. The research problem for students could be the contrasting tax incidence in Lithuania. Moreover, differences could be in a personal tax revenue and therefore individual tax indicators can be used. The object of the research is the aspect of the general and the personal tax burden in Lithuania during the pandemics of COVID19. An aim of the paper is to imply a conception of an individualized tax burden in the pandemic-days and not only. The main research methods that were used especially in graduate studies were taxation analysis in literature, data collection and systematization, comparative statistical data analysis, proportional analysis.

Discussion about national and government budgets and, certainly, about taxes is quite partial without a concept of a tax burden and the government budget revenue. In economics, tax incidence or tax burden is the effect of a particular tax on the distribution of economic welfare. The introduction of a tax drives a wedge between the price consumers pay and the price producers receive for a product, which typically imposes an economic burden on both producers and consumers. Tax incidence is said to "fall" upon the group that ultimately bears the burden of, or ultimately has to pay, the tax. The key concept is that the tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply. All these theories have their actuality again during the period of lock-down, when governments increase their expenditures to the unexpected previous size.

Although many economic and public finance publications examine the special impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the world economy, this has not been a particularly painful case in Lithuania in terms of public finances. Comparing the number of public finance revenues in 2018-2020, only a decrease in 2020 due to the collection of indirect taxes is clearly visible, e.g. VAT revenues decreased by a few percent. Meanwhile, direct taxes like profit and income taxes are increasing gradually from 2018, 2019 to 2020. Thus, it can be assumed that the impact of the pandemic in Lithuania was not as large as planned, i.e. there was no decrease in public finance revenues under the worst case scenario. Undoubtedly, costs have risen significantly and this has and will have an impact in the next few years.

Thus, it can be concluded that an understanding of public finances is necessary in the context of extreme situations. As mentioned by many authors and partly by the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, the time of a pandemic is close to a year of global crisis or even war. Therefore, support for national economies from public finances and international financial institutions and central banks must be understood at all levels, and especially in university studies.

Keywords:

Public finance, studies, COVID19, government budget.