The legal nature of the Slovenian special tax on undeclared income

Abstract

This paper deals with Slovenian special tax on undeclared income and attempts to determine its legal nature by presenting and analysing the regulation. The author believes that this public levy is actually not a tax since it lacks the financial purpose that each tax should have, according to the jurisprudence of the Slovenian Constitutional Court. Since the rate at which the special tax on undeclared income is levied exceeds the tax rates applied on declared income, and therefore the taxpayers burden is higher, the author claims that the discussed tax is actually a mixture of compensation for the lost tax revenue and a legal sanction, with both deterrent and retributive (punitive) purpose, which is imposed on the taxpayer for not declaring the income.