An examination of the effect of direct taxes on real output in different inflationary environments

Since taxes in general and direct taxes in particular have negative effects on real output, and direct taxes are the main sources of government tax incomes, the effect of direct taxes on real output is an important concern for policy makers. On the other hand, taxes have different effects on real output in various economic environments; one of them is different inflationary environments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of direct taxes on real gross domestic product in one of the most important environmental components; that is, inflationary environment in Iran's economy. Therefore, at first we used Markov Switching method to determine the different inflation regimes in Iran. Then, the effect of inflationary environments on the relationship between direct taxes and real output was estimated by using dummy variables. The results show the existence of the long-run equilibrium relationship. The results indicate that when taxes increase in high inflationary environment, it has a negative and significant impact on real output. In effect, if taxes increase one percent, the real GDP reduce 0.448 percent. When there is a shift to low inflationary environment (the third regime), direct taxes have positive and significant effect on real output. In this regime, one percent increase in direct taxes cause real output to decrease by about 0.045 percent.