Tax Progression vs Economic Growth & Development Index (GDI)

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to present a correlation relationship of the average tax rate, the amount of tax brackets and the so-called economic “growth & development index” (GDI) in the “high taxed” and “low taxed” European countries. The hypothesis is as follows: the more number of tax brackets in income progressive tax, the lower the GDI. Research methods used in the study are: unity-based normalization and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis. Spearman’s correlation between the average tax rate in “low tax rate” countries and GDI was negative and very strong, which means that as the average tax rate increases, the GDI decreases. That correlation was statistically significant. The correlation between the number of tax brackets and the GDI was examined only for the group of countries with the highest average tax rate as the second group of EU countries are progressive-free and was positive and strong, that is, with the increase in the number of tax brackets, the value of GDI increases. But by normal standards, the association between the two variables would not be considered statistically significant. Therefore, the hypothesis has been rejected. The subject of study requires further analysis.