The Trade-Off Between Direct and Indirect Taxes in Iran: Self-Exciting (SE)TAR Approach

One of the most challenging issues in tax policy debates is the trade-off between direct and indirect taxes. The main question is that should policy-maker focus on increasing direct taxes or indirect taxes? Accordingly, this paper investigates the issue of trade-off between direct and indirect taxes using a self- exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) model in Iran for the period 1971-2017. The findings showed direct and indirect taxes had affected on economic growth in a tree-regime structure. In the first regime (years that economic growth is less than -6.41%), the effect of direct and indirect taxes (% GDP) on economic growth was not significant. In the second regime (years that economic growth is greater than -6.41% and less than 9.47%), this effect was positive and significant for indirect taxes and insignificant for direct taxes. Finally, in the third regime (years that the economic growth is greater than 9.47%), direct and indirect taxation (% GDP) has had a significant negative and significant positive effect on economic growth, respectively. Therefore, it can be inferred that in the range of economic growth greater than -6.41%, a trade-off can be assumed to increase indirect taxes rather than direct taxes, so that has a positive effect on economic growth.