Tax Composition and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between changes in tax composition and long-run economic growth using a dataset of 37 Asian and African developing countries including Iran during the period 1972-2012. To do this, a Pooled Mean Group (PMG) procedure has been used to estimate the impacts of changes in tax component on the rate of growthof GDP per capita. Findings show that a shift from consumption and property taxes to income taxes has a negative association with economic growth. Other results are: (1) there is a strong positive relation between sales and property taxes and long-run economic growth; (2) a shift from income taxes to property taxes increases long-run economic growth more than a shift from income taxes to consumption and sales taxes; (3) value added and sales taxes have a significantly positive effect on long-run economic growth.