The impact of tax expenditures on economic growth: The US experience

Abstract

In the last decade, assessing the tax expenditures’ economic efficiency has grown in importance due to the increasing number of situations where stakeholders use tax benefits for personal enrichment. The problem is aggravated by the very nature of tax expenditures, which represent budget revenue losses. The expediency of tax expenditures can be proved by estimating their impact on economic growth. The paper aims to measure such impact using the case of the USA. Methodologically, the study relies on Barro’s conception of endogenous growth. The study applies econometric methods of analysis. The data for the study is taken from the Global Tax Expenditures Database (GTED), the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the U.S. Census Bureau for 1998–2022. The results indicate no correlation between the share of tax expenditures in a specific sphere in the total amount and their efficiency (the strength of the positive impact on GDP). For instance, the tax expenditures in commerce and housing have the greatest share (35.4 %), yet their impact is relatively weak compared to other categories of tax expenditures: 1 dollar of expenditures induces a 0.04 dollar increase in GDP. At the same time, tax expenditures in the social sphere with an insubstantial share of 2 % generate a 10 times higher return (a 0.49 dollar increase in GDP per 1 dollar of expenditures). Therefore, the structure of tax expenditures with an explicit social orientation appears to be the most preferable for the USA.