Estimation of Effective Corporate and Business Income Tax Rates in Iran

Effective tax rate is one of the most important tax efficiency criteria in tax literature. Moreover, tax system efficiency is usually measured by bilateral comparison between administrative costs and effective tax rate. By examination and estimation of effective tax rate, tax authorities are able to increase tax justice and investigate tax burden on taxpayers. Effective tax rate could be an instrument to direct capitals, as well as its wide using in policy-making and economic decisions. In present paper an attempt is made to estimate effective tax rate in business and corporate income tax. The results show that effective corporate tax rate had an increasing trend from 6.08 to 11.59 during 2001 to 2008 while effective business tax rate has been decreased by 2.1 to 1.3 between 2001 and 2007.