Tax policy and economic growth: Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

The government of Ghana implemented an Economic Recovery Program (ERP) in 1983, aimed at the restoration of fiscal discipline towards increasing revenue and promoting economic growth. In spite of the fiscal reforms’ growth in tax, revenue continues to lag behind that of government expenditure and compares poorly with revenue performance in other parts of the world. Economic growth in the country also settled around 5 per cent level for two decades after the introduction of the fiscal reforms. This paper examined the effect of tax policy measures on economic growth and explored the tax revenue threshold that optimizes economic growth using time series data for the period 1970 - 2020. The data sets involve GDP per capita, stock of human capital, physical capital, growth rate of working population, and six (6) tax indicators namely: import duty, excise tax, company tax, personal income tax, income and property tax, and value added tax. The results of the unit root test reveal that all the variables are stationary at levels and first difference. The bounds test signals the existence of long run relationship among the variables at 1 per cent level of significance. Employing the Autoregressive Distributed- Lag technique, the findings suggested that economic growth benefits from increases in import taxes and company taxes more than the other types of taxes both in the short and long run. However, increases in the share of value added taxes and personal income taxes were found to have deleterious effect on economic growth in Ghana. A threshold level of 14.48 per cent of tax revenue - GDP ratio was found to be optimal level of taxes that impact economic growth. The study recommends that broadening, nurturing and sustaining tax base should be the utmost target of policy to ensure significant increase in the total government revenue to promote economic growth.