Analysis of Employment Rate Reaction to the Tax Structure in Iran

The issue of labor supply and employment level response to the taxation system is one of the most controversial issues in the theoretical literature of economics with an uncertain outcome. The purpose of the present study is to examine the impact of fiscal policy on employment taxation and to test the hypothesis that taxation has a negative impact on employment rate. For this purpose, the Error Correction Method (ECM), the Toda-Yamamoto causality test and Iran annual time series data were used for the period of 1978 - 2017. The results of the vector error correction method confirmed a positive and significant relationship between the variables of import tax, GDP and consumer price index, as well as a negative and significant relationship between corporate tax and unemployment rate. Impulse response functions also shows that with the positive shock of corporate tax variables, the unemployment rate increases in the short run and tends to zero in the long run. Also, by creating a positive shock from the import tax variables and the consumer price index, the unemployment rate drops in the short run and tends to zero in the long run. It should be noted that the impact of positive shocks on GDP is on the volatile unemployment rate.