Taxation and investing in the comunity's infrastructure for ageing cohorts

In the last 15 years, Slovenia is trying to reach a consensus on long-term care and long-term care insurance that would define services to provide care for elderly people with declining functional abilities and depend on the help of others during their activities of daily life. Public policies and private initiatives have forced at the forefront of current problems a serious deficit in the capacities of Slovenian elderly homes and other assisted living facilities such as sheltered housing. Most local communities are unable to keep pace with demand for facilities needed for provision of services for older persons. Their primary obstacle is financial capacity or capability to invest in the social infrastructure. The paper is presenting the Slovenian community%s social infrastructure needs and identifying methods to invest in the infrastructure to meet the demand of an expanding number of old people in the community. Municipal revenues are comprised of various sources. Article 6 and 7 of the Financing of Municipalities Act (the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia no. 123/2006, 57/2008, 36/2011 and 14/2015 - ZUUJFO)) listed them: real estate taxes, water vessel tax, real property transaction tax, inheritance and gift tax, gaming tax and other taxes, in accordance with the law governing a particular tax. Financial resources for the municipalities also include revenues from voluntary contributions, levies, fines, concession fees, payment for local services and others in accordance with the legislation that governs individual levies or in accordance with regulations adopted under the law. Municipal revenue also includes the material and financial assets of the municipality, received donations and transfer revenues from the state budget and resources from the European Union funds. Financial resources also include revenue from income tax and other taxes, which are part of the state budget revenue in accordance with law for each fiscal year in the amount of the total municipal expenditure. One of the tax revenues is a tax on property, which is a real property tax comprising of tax on real estate (property tax and the building land use charge) and other taxes for the use of goods and services. Our research focuses only on the revenues from taxes on real estate which will replace the current property tax, the building land use charge, and fees for the maintenance of forest roads. The new tax legislation will influence the municipal revenue from which a part is suggested to be invested in the local social infrastructure. The conclusion is that we have to define standards of social infrastructure in the context of the spatial planning also for providing assisted living facilities and other facilities for older adults. For these construction activities, a part of property taxes should be assigned. Currently, the municipalities collect 202 Mio Eur of community fees. With the introduction of the new property taxes, there is a plan for an increase in the amount to 330 Mio Eur. Our projections show that Slovenia will need to develop 36000 new assisted living housing units for older persons till 2050. Therefore 60 Mio Eur from this difference per year is suggested to be invested in the development of the assisted living facilities for the provision of the long-term care, which will potentially decrease the needed amount of budget for healthcare, like concluded by Wood (2017). To smooth the investment process, the financial plan developed here includes the use of financing with already available loans from the European Investment Bank.