The Impact of Inflation Targeting on Tax Revenues: A Cross-country Analysis

The Central Banks Independence is one of the main prerequisites for implementing the framework for inflation targeting. In this framework, central banks shouldn’t require to keep nominal currency rate, economic growth rate increase inconsistent to inflation and too much reliance on seingniorage revenues. It is important for governments to rely on tax revenues to meet general resources rather than borrowing from central banks. According to Batini & Luxon (2006), by strengthening central bank independence and issuing a clear command to financial officials for keeping inflation low, the inflation targeting system make the government free from seingniorage revenues. As result it is expected for governments try to collect tax revenues to compensate tax revenue inflation. This article theoretical analysis indicates that inflation targeting encourages governments to increase taxation efficiency and increase tax revenue. The hypothesis of this research is supported by empirical criteria by using econometric technique and emphasis for dynamic data and GMM for time period of 1995-2012. The results indicate that the dummy variable of inflation targeting has positive effect on tax rate and the independent variable of shifting the head of central bank has negative effect on it.