Empirics of service taxation in India: a macroeconomic perspective

Mini Thomas

Journal of Social and Economic Development, 2017, vol. 19, issue 1, No 8, 143-160

Abstract: Abstract This paper attempts to study service taxation in India from a macroeconomic perspective, focusing on broad questions such as the level and composition of service tax revenue during the time span of the “positive list approach” from 1994–1995 to 2011–2012. The income elasticity of service tax revenue collection is estimated for the Indian economy with the help of pooled ordinary least squares, utilising data from Directorate of Service Tax and National Account Statistics. The importance of service tax as a consumption-based tax is also analysed descriptively. The study found that “business services” and “real estate and ownership of dwellings” have emerged as the major service tax revenue earners in recent years. The income elasticity of service tax revenue collection is estimated to be 2.74. The study found that in spite of India’s low tax–GDP ratio and humble contribution of service tax to total tax revenue collection, a high and statistically significant income elasticity of service tax revenue collection implies that service tax collection has in fact grown at a pace much faster than services GDP, underlining the importance of service sector in the Government’s revenue mobilisation efforts.

Keywords: Service tax; Tax–GDP ratio; Tax policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E60 H20 H25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40847-017-0036-0

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