Porez po tonaži broda - primjenjivo hrvatsko pravo i pravo Europske unije
Tonnage Tax: Relevant Croatian Legislation and the European Union Legal Framework

Summary/Abstract: Shipping is a global economic activity, which means that shipowners engaged in international maritime transport can, at relatively low cost, relocate their place of management to other countries in order to achieve more favourable tax treatment. Europe, as a traditional maritime centre, has been continuously losing importance due to the development of new maritime centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Recently, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has also been developing rapidly as a new centre, further reducing the importance of traditional shipping centres. These trends are the result of global economic developments, significant investments in shipping by countries such as China, and the changing global political situation. As shipping is one of the most sensitive industries, strongly dependent on political and macroeconomic influences, in addition to competition from new maritime centres, which are a relatively new phenomenon, the European Union (Union, EU) has for decades been facing the challenge of “flags of convenience”. In order to protect shipping, which is of key economic and strategic importance for the EU, a tonnage tax was introduced at the EU level as a measure to preserve European shipping and the registers of the Member States. The characteristic of the tonnage tax is that it does not depend on income and expenses or on increases or decreases in profits generated by shipping activities but is determined as a flat rate in relation to the ship’s tonnage. Since the application of this taxation method results in a lower overall tax burden, the tonnage tax is considered as a loss of State budget revenue, or as a form of indirect State aid. Consequently, it is subject to the European Union rules on State aids. The main source of European Union law regulating the tonnage tax is the European Union (formerly the Community) Guidelines on State Aid to Maritime Transport from 2004. An important legal source is also the decisions of the European Commission, by which it approved new aid programmes and expanded and exercised control over existing State aid programmes, in the form of a tonnage tax in individual Member States. Domestic legal sources regulating the tonnage tax are the provisions of the Maritime Code on the business terms for shipowners in international navigation and the Ordinance on the procedure and manner of exercising the right to tonnage tax. The paper analyses the legal sources of European Union law and the law of the Republic of Croatia on tonnage tax, makes proposals for their improvement, and evaluates the functioning of the tonnage tax system in the recent business environment in the shipping sector.

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