Journal of Tax Research
Year:2017 | Volume:25 | Issue:33 (81) |Papers Count:10

This paper investigates the effect of tax policy on entrepreneurship in different countries. Therefore, LLC and IPS panel unit root, test for pooled and panel data and Hausman test for Factor-Driven, Efficiency-Driven and Innovation-Driven Countries data have been used in period of 2002-2014. The results shows that tax rate has different effect on entrepreneurial activity in countries with different classification; Such tax rates have negative and significant effect on entrepreneurship in Factor-Driven and Efficiency-Driven countries while this effect is insignificant in Innovation-Driven Countries.

The value Added Tax system is a modern system that can play an important role in reforming the tax system and financial resources required by the government to perform its heavy duties. But the regressive nature of such taxes has caused the government faces with serious obstacles to achieve one of its important goals, which is inequality reduction and fair income distribution. In order to discount the regressive effect of taxes, generally two basic actions can be identified; First, granting exemptions to those group of goods that has a large share in the low-income households' budget portfolio, and the second, designing a tax system with multiple rates, in which the essential goods are taxed with lower rates and luxury goods used by the high income classes are taxed by the higher tax rates. The second approach, while complicating the tax system, increases the compliance and enforcement costs and this is why the first approach has been adopted in Iran.

Iran’ s economy has been always under pressure to provide resources for public spending and it is limited by a tax system that causes disruption in the behavior of economic agents; therefore, it is expected that the country’ s tax system can be improved via inspiring by the global tax reforms. The opponents argue that the lack of comprehensive tax information system, low administrative capacity of the Tax Agency and taxpayers, and different economic structure of Iran make such reforms impossible in Iran. But it must be emphasized that Iran’ s economy will face three major challenges in the field of social security, reduced tax revenues from international trade and competitiveness in the near future. Therefore, expanding the tax bases and lowering the tax rates is necessary in dealing with these challenges, and this is possible through the comprehensive income tax system. The main objective of this study is to investigate and compare the comprehensive income tax system and its adjusted versions with the tax system in Iran. The results show that the Iran’ s tax system is very complex and violates the principles and objectives of tax reform in many cases. Furthermore, high tax burden on companies, high rates of social security, and widespread tax evasion in the self-employed section are among the features of the Iranian tax system which apart it from other common tax systems in the world. In order to reform the tax system in Iran, the best method is fundamental reforms based on the comprehensive income tax system, if it is not possible for any reason (the lack of prerequisites or political consensus), we can do some adjustments (reform in a scientific framework based on tax expenditures and economic interests; simplifying the tax system; bias correction in providing corporate finance method and mitigating double taxation; threshold for exemption based on relative poverty; adjustment of tax threshold, depreciation, and interest deductions for inflation; change of executive system from tax-based structure to functional basis structure; improvement of tax justice perception; change the tax unit from the individual to the family; providing tax system without having to provide tax returns from taxpayers) to improve the existing system.

Due to the importance of tax revenues compared to oil revenues in supplying government budget, it is necessary to study tax system efficiency. The decline in real tax revenues is affected by two factors i. e. tax lags and inflexible tax system. If tax Collection Lag is long and the tax system is inflexible, inflation will make the real tax income cut. So, in this study, we tried to use the data from 1380 to 1390 and the cointegration method of Johansen-Juselius to calculate the tax lags and price elasticity of various tax income groups in Golestan province. The results indicate that during the study period, the average tax collection lags were 11 months (companies’ tax lag was 15 months, tax income lag was about 15. 3 months, and tax wealth lag was about 2. 13 months and the indirect tax lag was about 3/5 months. In other words, the average direct tax collection lags were 79/10 months (11 months). However, during the study period, indirect taxes collection lags were 5. 32 months which is less than the direct tax collection lags.

The question that to what extent taxation influences on direct foreign investment has been the subject matter of many researches to which different responds were given. Some researchers, in general, have considered tax system, others survey specific types of taxes – in particular, corporate income tax-and the rest have focused on tax incentives for Special purpose. Many countries, given those inadequate domestic sources, have a strong tendency to attract foreign investment. The occurrence of double taxation in international economic activities is considered as the main obstacle facing the expansion of foreign investment, so that various solutions provided to avoid it in the international tax system. The methods of avoiding double taxation are divided into unilateral and bilateral ones. Among unilateral methods, exemption and tax credit are more acceptable which have had a positive effect in encouraging foreign investment. In the same way, the bilateral methods mean approval of bilateral enforceable agreements between countries to avoid double taxation. The efficiency of the UN and OECD in the field of tax agreements (bilateral) standards has been more controversial rather than unilateral one.

In this paper, we present indices by which it is possible to characterize and detect those potential users of false invoices in a given year, depending on the information of their tax payment, their historical performance and characteristics, using different types of data mining techniques. In this research first, clustering algorithms like Self-Organizing Map (SOM) and neural gas networks are used to identify groups of similar behaviors of taxpayers. Then decision trees, neural networks and Bayesian networks are used to identify those variables that are related to conduct of fraud and/or no fraud, detect patterns of associated behavior and establishing to what extent cases of fraud and/or no fraud can be detected with the available information. We utilize some information gained from tax auditors who are working in the Tax offices of Tehran and the informal unofficial statistics and anonymous questionnaire from some companies to gain primary data to detect fraud and compare different techniques of false invoices. To determine the main indexes in false invoices, we divided taxpayers to the micro and small enterprises and on the other side medium and large enterprises and examined the factors of fraud on each groups, with neural gas networks, separately. Particularly the neural gas method found that it was possible to identify some relevant variables to differentiate between good or bad behavior, not necessarily associated with the use and sale of false invoices. Kohonen’ s method however, did not provide any behavioral patterns. In the case of micro and small businesses, the percentage of correctly detected fraud cases was 92%, while in the case of medium and large enterprises, this percentage was 89%.

the Unrecorded tax debt among companies is an important issue for Iranian National Tax Administration (INTA). In this regard, judgment of auditors plays an important role to help INTA while dealing with this kind of condition. Several scholars in accounting area have discussed the factors affecting auditors’ judgments. However, this study attempts to introduce and examine different components of individual view of spiritual capital (ethics, morals, personal values and culture) on auditors’ judgments. The extracted data from Iranian certified Public Accountants’ questionnaire have been tested through Spearman correlation and multiple regressions. The results of study imply that the spiritual capital of an individual could affect adjustments of auditors’ judgments when they face ethical dilemma like unrecorded tax debt.

From the beginning of the third millennium, the issue of tax avoidance is examined from different aspects, but there is little evidence to the type of action on earning quality including earnings predictability. Accordingly, this research seeks to study the impact of tax avoidance on earnings predictability of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. To test the hypothesis, the panel data from 99 companies during 2005-2013 have been analyzed by Eviews 7. The results showed that tax avoidance reduces earnings predictability. In other words, although tax avoidance has resulted in increased future cash flows but it may be reduced due to the uncertainty in realization of the earning predictability.