Investigating the Economic Effects of Amendment of Law of Value Added Tax (VAT) in Iran: Computable General Equilibrium Model (CGE) Approach

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic effects of amendment of law of value added tax in Iran. The research method is quantitative and standard CGE model of Lafgren et al (2002) is used for analyzing. Data are derived from the latest Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Iran in 2011, which is provided by the Research Center of the Parliament. The data are analyzed in the form of the research model using the GAMS software. The conclusion shows that implementation of VAT increases the tax revenue and government revenue, total savings, total investment and total absorption. On the other hand, implementation of this law increases the inflation; reduce the GDP and households' incomes and expenditures. According to the the prevalence of positive effects on negative effects, the implementation of VAT Law has been relatively successful during the experimental period.