Czy PIT komunalny może ograniczyć rozlewanie się miast?

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, to re-energize discussion on local personal tax, and second, to show how such a tax could curb urban sprawl. The authors start with a short description of the communal tax and its potential links to urban sprawl. In the current system of communities’ financing in Poland, suburban municipalities have a significant incentive to increase the number of inhabitants as the PIT revenues follow their inflow. The authors propose and discuss a simple variant of local PIT called Self-government Tax Rate which is a flat tax on a broadly defined tax base. Contrary to the present system of Polish local government units’ share in progressive PIT, this system is linear, which reduces the gains in PIT revenues from taxpayers in the second tax bracket moving to suburbia. This is the first paper in the relevant literature that investigates the links between communal tax and urban sprawl.