An analysis on VAT impact on employment; cross-country study

Value Added Tax (VAT) which its Act has been approved and executed during the last few years for some firms in Iran, is one of the forms of indirect-taxes known and has implications for economic indices including employment. Since considering positive and negative implications of any new policy is requisite for gaining more success in executing that policy, it is necessary to investigate VAT law performance in different countries. This study aims to investigate the relation between VAT execution and employment. The method used is dynamic panel data (OGMM) and the statistic sample covers 27 countries including 11 non-OECD and 16 OECD countries. Results show that the impact of VAT law execution on employment is 0.089 in non-OECD and 0.04 in OECD countries. Therefore the impact in the two groups of countries is both positive and statistically significant. It is also concluded that other forms of taxation have impacts of -0.014 and -0.029 for non-OECD and OECD countries respectively. So it could be said that VAT has a positive impact on employment while other forms of taxation result in decreasing it.