Estimating tax evasion in Iran and investigating its causes and effects: A Multiple Indicators - Multiple Causes (MIMIC) Approach

Tax evasion is one of the main characteristics of the informal economy. Today it is considered a major challenge for countries and an important problem for tax systems. This study tries to estimate the tax evasion in Iran using by multiple-cause-multiple causes (MIMIC) method, and investigate its main causes and effects during the period of 1979-2015. The results oftax evasion time series show that despite some fluctuations, the tax evasion in Iran has been generally increasing over the period, it has moved up from 12.6% of GDP in 1357 to 33.11% of GDP in 1394. The results also indicate that inflation, tax burden, per capita income and official exchange rate have a significant positive effect on tax evasion, and the economic openness index, government size and unemployment rate have a negative effect on it. According to the findings, per capita income has the most significant impact on the tax evasion andon the other hand, tax evasion hasthe most impact on the growth of money demand.