Forecasting direct tax revenues (for the Fifth Five-Year Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plan of I. R. Iran)

One of the most important components of the government budget is the taxrevenues. Having knowledge of tax volumes which can be collected from differenttax bases will help the government in optimally allocating the resources for taxcollection purposes, in doing exact financial plantings, and in identifying the extentto which citizens have participated in providing for the government’s publicexpenditures. In the present research, we have made use of statistical data of theyears 1961-2005 in order to estimate direct tax revenues (corporate income tax,individual income tax, and property tax) of the years 2010-2014 (the periodcovered by the Fifth Five-Year Economic, Social, and Cultural Development). Thefindings indicate that direct tax revenues will have an increasing trend in the fifthdevelopment plan and that the ascending trend of corporate income tax has notdeviated from its long-term trend up to the year 2005 in the sense that the collectedtaxes have all the time been less than forecasted but as from 2005 onward, due tothe addition of the performance of oil sector, the collected revenues have beenmore than forecasted. On the hand, as for individual income tax, the collectedrevenues have been less than forecasted and the revenues collected from theproperty tax category have been more than forecasted.