The Impact of Inflation Expectations and Public Debt on Taxation in South Africa

Abstract

The study investigates the impact of inflation expectations and public debt on taxation in South Africa, employing the autoregressive distributive lag model and Granger Causality techniques. The results indicate a long-run positive significant relationship between inflation expectations and taxation and a negative significant relationship between public debt and taxation. This reveals that when consumers and businesses expect the inflation rate to rise, taxable income will also increase. The public debt-taxation nexus can imply that the South African government finances its debts through borrowing than through taxation. Therefore, economic participants must have full knowledge of what can influence taxation.