Effects of Tax Incentives and Subsidies on Economic Growth in Developing Economies

Tax incentives are defined as tax rules that go against the generally accepted principles of tax neutrality and fairness which are aimed at fostering both foreign and local investment since they promote greater investment competitiveness among emerging nations, maximize returns on investments, and reduce costs and inefficiencies in the investment market. Subsidies on the other hand are described as any government aid to private industry producers or consumers, whether financial or in-kind, which requires no commensurate repayment to the government in exchange but prerequisite the benefit on a certain conduct by the receiving firm or industry. This study aims to investigate the potential effectiveness of tax incentives and subsidies in enhancing economic development and growth among developing economies. Most developing economies, if not all, that are members of the UN organization work toward achieving the SDGs by 2030,and this is significantly influenced by the amount of investment they attract to boost economic growth and encourage improvements in citizen welfare. This study uses secondary data from World Bank, IMF, and OECD reports for a target period of 2010 – 2022 to examine how tax incentives affect economic development in emerging economies with a focus on Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, and Türkiye. For this study, the researcher used STATA version 15 to investigate the underlying relationship between the variables. The researcher performed a panel data regression analysis using the generalized estimating equations approach. The P-value approach used by the researcher assesses the relevance of the study’s variables, for which the p-value is set at 0.05. This is a comparative study, as such the researcher prefers to use the generalized estimating equation method to perform a panel data regression analysis because it can simulate the population as a whole and because the data may be correlated, which would violate the independence assumptions of other traditional regression procedures. The study obtained positive and significant effects of subsidies on investments and economic growth. Incentives on taxes on production, sales, and transfers and taxes on profits and capital gains registered a non-significant positive effect on investment; however, the effects were insignificant and negative for economic growth