The Evaluation of Tax Exemptions of Article 132 Impact on Firm's Establishment and Investment in Iran's Less Developed Cities

Nowadays in many developing countries, tax incentives are used in order to attract investment and it seems, in order to affect the local economy, levying lower taxes is always the easiest solution selected by the governments. However, still providing a coherent condition and framework for tax incentives to boost investment, economic growth and increase employment is one of the challenging and investigating issues for economic policymakers, especially financial authorities, and researchers in developing and even developed countries. On one hand, the effectiveness of such tax incentives is considerable as a policy package compared to its costs, and on the other hand, the economic theories are considering seriously reducing the cost of investment. The aim of this paper is to study the impact of tax exemptions of the article 132 on firms entering and investment in Iran’s less developed cities over the period 1996 – 2008. The method used is Synthetic Control Method (SCM). The optimal weights are derived systematically and via an optimization process. In this method, in order to obtain the results in the case of the mentioned tax exemptions’ lack for the treated cities, the weighted combination from results of control counties (ineligible counties for the tax exemptions) is used. The results indicate that tax exemptions of Article 132 have no impact on firms entering and investment in Iran’s less developed counties.