Worldwide Tax Revenue Collection: Lessons from Pre-Pandemic Era

Abstract

Despite the fact that majority of countries in the world rely heavily on tax revenue, there is a vast difference in terms of tax collection performance. This study reassessed several structural, economic, demographic and institutional factors that potentially explain the variation. We employ pooled OLS, fixed effect and system GMM estimations to analyze a panel data of 161 countries for 15 years spanning from 2002 to 2017. Our findings confirmed that level of development and investment are among key factors that leads to revenue improvement. It is very likely that such a relationship has two-way directions. Other factors such as trade openness, inflation, share of agriculture and national resources in the economy, population, and governance, cannot be downplayed despite its mixed inferences.