Open AccessBuoyancy Estimates of Malaysia's Tax System 1961 – 1998
Author(s) -
Jeyapalan Kasipillai,
Muszafarshah Mohd Mustafa
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
malaysian management journal/malaysian management journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2289-6651
pISSN - 0128-6226
DOI - 10.32890/mmj.4.1-2.2000.8580
Subject(s) - indirect tax , ad valorem tax , tax credit , value added tax , economics , tax reform , direct tax , state income tax , public economics , monetary economics
Several criteria are used to determine a 'good tax system' and they include administrative feasibility, ensuring burden of tax is spread fairly among taxpayers and tax buoyancy. Tax buoyancy measures the responsiveness of tax revenue to income growth. Previous studies have assumed a constant buoyancy estimate for the period under study and hence applied a double-log tax model (Mansfield, 1972; Choudhry, 1975; Byrne, 1983). In practice, however, tax buoyancies may change over time due to inflation, changing tax bases, improved tax administration and stricter enforcement of tax law by revenue authorities. This study uses the Box-Cox tax model which allows the determination of inter-temporal tax buoyancies for the period 1961-1998. The results obtained revealed a steady decline in buoyancy estimates of less than one for both direct and indirect taxes implying inefficiencies in the tax system. Suggestions are made to revamp the current tax system by integrating existing indirect taxes such as sales and service tax into a single broad-based consumption tax.