Tax revenue is the most important source of state revenue nowadays. One of the largest sources of tax revenue is Value Added Tax (VAT) and Sales Tax on Luxury Goods. Tax buoyancy and elasticity is a common measure employed to estimate tax revenue productivity. Concept of elasticity is used to determine the level of responsiveness of automatic (built-in) of tax revenue to the tax base. While the concept of buoyancy is useful to know responsiveness of tax revenue, both to the tax base and to changes in policy. By using the Divisia index during 1984 to 2012, this research specifies that the coefficients of buoyancy and elasticity are 0.99 and 0.82 respectively. It shows that the PPN / PPnBM (VAT and Sales Tax on Luxury Goods) relatively unitary buoyant, but less elastic to the tax base. While using the basis of sectoral GDP from 2005 to 2012, VAT revenues also inelastic with respect to the development of the tax base with a coefficient of 0.632 and a buoyant relative to GDP overall with a coefficient of 1.076. Inelastic tax system forces governments to continuously make discretionary changes, either in the tax bases or in the tax rates or both, in order to be able to keep up with increasing public expenditures. Moreover, the point elasticity indicates that manufacturing and mining sectors are fluctuating as the VAT key sector and the trade sector are relatively stable and buoyant. Therefore, the government needs to review the policies of both the base and the VAT structure, in particular for the manufacturing and the mining sector.
Are some taxes better for growth in Pakistan? A time series analysis