Journal of Tax Research

  Abstract

  In this research, inflationary and distributive effects of VAT on different Iranian economic sectors are investigated. The results indicate that from 29 main category products (91 sub-category products), 15 category products have more price increase and 14 ones have lower price increase related to tax rate. According to weighted average results which present mean inflation effects of VAT in general Economy, 7.4 percent inflation would be predicted if VAT was implemented without any exemption, and if some inflationary sectors were exempted, the inflation rate would be 3.4 percent. According to the calculated Gini coefficients, it can be observed that Gini coefficients before VAT implementation are lower than other Gini coefficients. The difference between these Gini coefficients is unimportant so that the difference ranges from 0.0017 to 0.0052 after VAT implementation. In fact it can be said that indirect taxes substitution with VAT has regressive effects which is insignificant and can be decreased by exemptions and multi rates.