Investigation of Welfare Effects Distribution of Exempt Goods and Services List Changes in Iran VAT System

Compensation of the regressivity is one of the reasons to exempt some goods and services in VAT system. This approach also can be seen in determining the exempt goods and services list in Iran; As in the amendment bill of VAT law was pursued and led to the proposal of modifying the current list of exempt goods and services, which has been undergone some changes in economic committee of Islamic Parliament. The aim of present paper is to investigate how this policy will affect on VAT regressivity according to loss (benefit) distribution criterion in different expenditure groups. Therefore, a quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QAIDS) consisting of 6 commodity groups has been estimated for 39000 households during 2017 – 2018, using nonlinear seemingly unrelated regression. The innovation of this paper is not only because of its subject, but also due to its estimation method and micro information. Results of the welfare effects distribution arising from the change of exempt goods and services list, using the ratio of compensatory change of different household groups to the average of their expenditure, show that this criterion is more for middle and lower deciles in comparison to upper. Thus, modifying the vat exemptions list can decrease VAT regressivity to some extent.