A Review of Tax Reforms in Iran & around the World (with an Emphasize on Tax System Modernization)

Tax reform is a process through which policies and administration methods of taxation are changed in order to increase government revenues, gain economic stability, improve resource allocation and tax system efficiency. Accordingly, the approaches of tax reform are mainly aimed at decreasing distortional effects of taxes in order to maintain economic competitiveness, decreasing tax rates diversities to reduce unwanted distortions of relative prices, expansion of value added tax to decrease tax burden of the productive sectors, vertical equity rather than horizontal equity, as well as reducing administrative and compliance costs of taxation. In general, tax administration reform is one aspect of the reform of a tax system and it includes a broad range of measures to be taken in order to improve implementation processes of taxation. Modernizing of tax processes is one of the aspects of tax administration reform. During the last decades, most of the countries have accelerated the use of ICT in tax administration in the area of delivering online taxpayer services, online payment and so on. Even in some countries, cell phone based technologies are used in taxation. According to the experiences of tax reforms around the world, tax policy reform should be done prior to any tax administration reform and hence tax modernization. In other word, tax policies, rules and regulations should be redesigned based on information technology. Otherwise tax processes mechanization may encounter internal resistance and external objections and the desired results may not be achieved. In this regard, tax simplification should be a priority of any tax reform program, and tax forms should also be as simple as possible while keeping taxpayer obligations at a minimum level. The tax system of Iran has been witnessed major changes both in tax policies and tax administration in line with the execution of the article 59 of the Third Development Plan Act.