Non-tax revenue in the European Union : a source of fiscal risk?

This paper examines the characteristics of government non-tax revenue in the European Union. Nontax revenue includes a large number of diverse income sources, such as fees charged for the provision of public services, income from financial assets and government property, and EU funds. Receipts from sources other than taxes account for slightly more than one-tenth of total revenue, but the fiscal risk stemming from the volatility of non-tax revenue is three times higher than that from the volatility of tax revenue. We present measurements of volatility in non-tax receipts in the Member States that can help identify the uncertainty around annual projections of revenue. Panel data analysis is used to examine whether macroeconomic and fiscal variables can explain the differences in non-tax revenue among Members States. Government spending, tax receipts and the size of financial assets held by government are found to explain close to a third of the cross-sectional variation in non-tax revenue. Granger causality tests are used to examine the direction of causality across Member States between non-tax revenue, tax receipts, and government spending.