In recent two decades, tax simplification has turned to be one essential component of tax reform plans in different countries. This is not only due to negative impacts complexity has on voluntary compliance costs resulting in tax evasion, but also due to the fact that it is a big barrier to tax fairness and efficiency (in case of income taxes) and as such, it is a factor far beyond administrative and compliance costs. Although a deeper understanding of various aspects of tax simplification requires more comprehensive investigations, this paper, which seems to be just a point of departure for putting such issues under discussion in Iran, aims at exploring different dimensions of tax simplification, reviewing different countries’ experience, and, in the end, offering some recommendations for reforming the Iranian tax system. Investigations show that a low compliance rate, a high volume of administrative circular directives, and an inappropriate combination of tax revenues do obviously indicate that the existing taxation system in Iran is quite complicated. Therefore, one of the essential challenges ahead of the Iranian taxation system can be tax simplification, in general, and tax laws simplification, in particular, which demands for a serious interaction between tax authority and legislating institutions.

Keywords: Tax reform, complicatedness, tax simplification, tax compliance

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