Price Effects of Value Added Tax Based on Input – Output Approach (The Case of Iran)

Abstract

Reforming Iran’s tax system is one of the most important issues due to the role of government’s expenditures and uncertainty in oil income. Therefore the modern value-added tax system is recognized as an approach by which tax transparency and tax structure reform can be enabled. However, increase in prices is an impact of applying this system. In this paper we have taken the advantage of symmetric product-by-product input-output table with basic prices to study the impacts of implementing value-added tax systems. With the help of IO-SAM software, this is the first time to set the Make and Use matrix on price basis of the year 1378. This table is the only table that can be used in analyzing price impacts caused by value-added tax system. The results illustrate; a 3-percent value added tax rate leads to increase in level of prices for about 1.5 percent, without consideration of any tax exemption. After exempting subject products of article 12 of value-added tax law, this index reaches 0.8 percent. Moreover, our examinations identify a 2.99 housing service price impact as the highest among the other 119 products’ in the economy. This rather high impact is generally rooted in its being not interchangeable in the as well as its overweighting demand.

Keywords

• value added tax
• input-output
• price