Political and institutional determinants of the tax mix : an empirical investigation for OECD countries

Modern tax systems show a mix of direct and indirect taxes. However, it is difficult if not impossible to explain actual tax systems on the ba-sis of optimality conditions. Political and institutional factors are some-times argued to explain the presence of very complex tax structures. Wepropose various hypotheses that relate the tax structure to some political and institutional explanatory variables. The hypotheses are tested by ap-plying panel data analysis on a large sample of OECD countries for the period 1965 to 1995. We conclude that political and institutional vari-ables do not substantially influence the actual shape of the tax structure.