Correlations of Taxation and Macroeconomic Indicators in the OECD Member Countries from 2014 to the First Year of the Crisis Caused by COVID-19

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The hypotheses should be removed from the abstract.

In the introduction, lines 35-36 should be rephrased, as it is unclear.

Lines 63-64, rephrase and explain what Table 1 reports.

In lines 79-82, probably the references in brackets in line 81 and 82 does not refer to the previous sentence because the sentence begins with a reference already.

The last paragraph of the introduction should be restructured and provide clear hypotheses.

The table, in conclusion, should be removed and explained.

Good luck.

Author Response

First, we would like to thank you for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewers. We have made lots of modifications to our original manuscript accordingly. We would also like to address the following comments to our highly appreciated Reviewers on some critics, which may need some detailed explanation rather than just modifying the manuscript.

• Hypotheses have been removed, Abstract has been simplified and made clearer (as other Reviewers requested it).
• The lines about Adam Smith and his theoretical framework has been reworked and made clearer.
• Original lines 63-64 have been rephrased, two paragraphs have been merged, and supplemented with az introductory sentence on Table 1.
• The articles listed in the mentioned parentheses (originally in lines 81-82) all refer to the 1994 Gravelle study in the previous sentence, as we wanted to emphasize its validity.
• The last paragraph of the Introduction section have been restructured and the hypotheses have been articulated clearly.
• Table 8 has been removed. Results of the hypotheses had already been partially explained, but we supplemented it with some more details.

Regarding all the other comments not highlighted above, we made the necessary modifications in the manuscript. We do hope that you will find our rewised manuscript satisfying and recommendable for publishing!

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper examines the correlation between taxation and macroeconomic indicators in OECD countries before and during COVID-19. However, my comments and suggestions are as follows:

1.The abstract should be more specific. The authors should reorganize the abstract with more clear expression.

2.The contributions of this paper are not clear. More backgroud about the taxation in the pandemic should be added in the introduction section.

3.The literature review and hypotheses development should be separated from the introduction section. The specific hypotheses should be listed in literature review section. More latest literature should be added.

4.Figure 2 is not clear.

5. All tables and figures should be referred to in the main body.

6.Section 4 should be “discussion” that is missing in this paper.

7. The conclusions section (Section 5) should include the main conclusions made in this paper, practical implications and limitations.

Author Response

First, we would like to thank you for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewers. We have made lots of modifications to our original manuscript accordingly. We would also like to address the following comments to our highly appreciated Reviewers on some critics, which may need some detailed explanation rather than just modifying the manuscript.

• Exact hypotheses have been removed from the Abstract (as other Reviewers requested it), and Abstract has been simplified and made clearer.
• The very beginning of the Introduction was supplemented with a few new paragraphs and the insertion of fresh literary references.
• As we understand the journal’s template, literature review should be placed in the Introduction section, thus we didn’t find a way to separate those into different section. However, specific hypotheses have been articulated clearly at the end of literature review. The article also has been supplemented with nearly 10 new, fresh references.
• Two other reviewers considered Figure 2 unnecessary to include in the article, so we deleted it. Also, Figure 3 has been transformed into a table and the missing legend has been replaced.
• After overviewunk the paper, all tables and figues are reffered to in the main body.
• After reviewing the journal’s guide for authors and the corresponding „Template“, we decided to transform our Conclusion section to Discussion. (Conclusion section is not mandatory and is necessary when discussion is unusually long or complex, but we find that this is not the case in our paper.)
• Conclusions section (now Discussion) have been reworked. Table 8 has been removed, and the findings on the hypotheses have been elaborated in the paragraphs. Suggestion on extending the research has also been added at the end.

Regarding all the other comments not highlighted above, we made the necessary modifications in the manuscript. We do hope that you will find our rewised manuscript satisfying and recommendable for publishing!

Reviewer 3 Report

The article submitted for review, although it addresses an important issue, was unfortunately prepared carelessly. Numerous shortcomings on the part of the authors can be pointed out, which have a major impact on the quality of the submitted article, and especially impinge on the substantive analysis undertaken by the authors. The issues that raise significant doubt and impinge on the low rating of the article are described in the comments below.

 

Comment #1 - the layout of the article

 

The article is devoid of a "Discussion" section. The authors in the article template had an indication of what should be in such a section (Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directions may also be highlighted). In the reviewer's opinion, an article lacking this section is incomplete. One can even point out that the absence of such an essential part disqualifies the article submitted for review.

 

Comment #2 - tebels and data sources

Tables 5, 6 and 7 do not indicate in the sources from which data source their own research was conducted. 

 

Comment #3 - editing of tables

The authors do not follow the requirements for writing the shape and form of the tables as indicated in the "Template". As a result, the data tables were prepared in a careless manner.

 

Comment #4 - readability of Figure 2 and Figure 3 data.

Figure 2 completely illegible. It is not clear what data the authors present in the Figures. The authors should present each Figures shown in Figure 2 separately (perhaps use Apendix for this purpose). Figure 3 in the reviewer's opinion is a table, not a Figure. The data presented in Figure 3 is not very clear. Lack of explanation of "*", "**" - should be under the table.

 

Comment #5 - "References"

The authors cite only 23 items in the references. In the reviewer's opinion, the literature review was not professionally done. Numerous items referring to the subject matter under discussion are missing here. Above all, the authors have not made a professional introduction, which would be adequately based on the literature review. It is good that the authors draw attention to classic and quite long-established publications. Unfortunately, of the 23 publications cited, less than half were published in the last 5 years (2017-2022). In addition, not all publications were written in references according to the requirements set in the "Template".

 

Comment #6 - no reference in the text to cite in the abstract

The authors indicate "Our starting point is that a predictable tax system is a pillar of economic sustainability." Unfortunately, there is no reference to the indicated point in other parts of the article. The authors do not explore from the side of the very rich literature on this issue. The text also lacks at least a general reference to the problem of "economic sustainability". In the reviewer's opinion, the abstract should not only encourage the reader to read the article, but present the key aspects involved. Unfortunately, the authors apparently forgot about this.

 

Comment #7 - no information on Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability Statement, Acknowledgments, Conflicts of Interest.

The reviewer does not know why the authors have completely deleted information on Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability Statement, Acknowledgments, Conflicts of Interest. Thus, it is impossible to assess whether the article meets the ethical standards set by MDPI for publishability. And so it is not known, for example, whether the authors were assisted by someone in the preparation of the data (in which case it would be appropriate to thank such person or persons). Is the article funded, and by whom? It is also unknown what was the contribution of the authors to the various parts. The absence of these issues, in the reviewer's opinion, disqualifies the article from being publishable. The reviewer feels morally uncomfortable reviewing an article devoid of a clear answer to the questions indicated.

 

Comment #8 - choice of 2014 as the starting year for analysis (raises serious concerns)

The authors took 2014 as the first year for the analyzed data. In justification of the choice of this year they indicate "This is because 2014 was the first (generally consolidated) year of recovery from the subprime crisis in most of the OECD countries...". No footnote here to the source of such information. The authors do not indicate what effect the fact that some countries recovered from the crisis, some recovered in 2014 and some recovered later has on further considerations. Unfortunately, the authors do not show (even if only in tabular form) the groups of OECD countries that were post-crisis or exited in 2014. It is not clear what proportion of OECD countries is affected. In the reviewer's opinion, the starting year under the analyzed variables was incorrectly adopted. One should have chosen the year before the crisis, or the year when all OECD countries were in crisis, or the year closest to 2014, when all OECD countries were post-crisis. An interesting aspect would have been to present, for example, the first year of the subprime crisis with the first year of the pandemic in OECD countries. Unfortunately, the authors do not do this.

 

Comment #9 - line 81

Line 81 incorrectly uses a separate paragraph that is a citation of only the quoted publications without preceding them with the appropriate content. It is impossible to indicate whether this is a mistake and is a continuation of line 80, or whether the authors simply deleted a portion of the text.

 

Comment #10 - Materials and Methods

In their study, the authors indicate the numerous variables they took into account in their study. This aspect is presented rather haphazardly. There is also a lack of rationale as to why exactly these indicators are given by the authors. The authors should justify the choice of each indicator separately, e.g. in a table at the same time highlighting what influenced the choice of this indicator (e.g. use by such and such an author in similar studies, or clearly defined goals of the authors themselves). Thus, for example, the Unemployment rate variable appears here, and why no Employment rate?

 

Commentary #11 - Results

The authors present the statistics developed in a rather simple way. One can even point out that they refer them in some passages step by step. In the reviewer's opinion, the article is unambitious on the methodological side. Perhaps it is worth thinking about developing an econometric model that would focus on assessing the predictability of tax systems.

 

Comment #12 - "post-pandemic war?"

The authors throw in the phrase "the post-pandemic war" in their text. It is not clear why they formulate the indicated issue this way. The term pandemic situation and post-pandemic situation would suffice (although it is difficult to talk about the post-pandemic situation when we are still dealing with successive waves of pandemics). Many experts point out that COVID will stay with us forever. And by the same token, it might be worthwhile for the authors to indicate how to create a tax system in a situation of continued pandemic uncertainty.

Author Response

First, we would like to thank you for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewers. We have made lots of modifications to our original manuscript accordingly. We would also like to address the following comments to our highly appreciated Reviewers on some critics, which may need some detailed explanation rather than just modifying the manuscript.

• After reviewing the journal’s guide for authors and the corresponding „Template“, we decided to transform our Conclusion section to Discussion. (Conclusion section is not mandatory and is necessary when discussion is unusually long or complex, but we find that this is not the case in our paper.)
• We indicated the source of the data (OECD).
• All tables and figures have been reformatted according to the „Template“.
• Two other reviewers considered Figure 2 unnecessary to include in the article, so we deleted it. Figure 3 has been transformed into a table and the missing legend has been replaced.
• The article has been supplemented with nearly 10 new, fresh references. References section has been reformatted.
• Exact hypotheses have been removed from the Abstract, and it has been simplified and made clearer (as other Reviewers requested it as well). 
• We added the missing information on Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability Statement, Conflicts of Interest.
• Regarding the choice of 2014 as the starting year: in 2014, OECD statistics show that GDP growth was not negative in any country. The rationale for choosing 2014 is to present the post-recession situation and to highlight the impact of the next period of fiscal conjuncture on the tax system.
• About Line 81: the inclusion in a separate paragraph was an editing error, the sources were attached to the end of the previous paragraph.The articles listed in the mentioned parentheses (originally in lines 81-82) all refer to the 1994 Gravelle study in the previous sentence, as we wanted to emphasize its validity.
• The selection of the variables was explained in the article before Table 2, and in Table 2 we also indicated the sources on the basis of which the hypotheses were established.
• We think that our paper could provide a good basis for developing an econometric model that would focus on assessing the predictability of tax systems, but that wasn’t the main focus of our research, and including this suggestion in one single article would extremely exceed the limitations of the paper. However, we added your suggestion as a potential next step in this research are.
• We accepted the Reviewer’s suggestion on deleting the term „war“ from the last paragraph.

Regarding all the other comments not highlighted above, we made the necessary modifications in the manuscript. We do hope that you will find our rewised manuscript satisfying and recommendable for publishing!

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors

I find the paper interesting and fairly conclusive and I suggest only the following minor refinements: 

Main title: Could be sharpened to better highlight the main contributions of the paper.

 Abstract: The focus of the ending phrases between rows 23-29 could be more clearly on the political aspect (ref. Table 1).

Introduction: The research objectives are nicely set on early grounds and  chracterized in Table 1, which could be made more use of in the discussion of the forthcoming findings. The last paragraph (rows 94-101) could be shifted to the next chapter below Table 2, and replaced by the research objectives from rows 105-114 (without acronyms). After that, a short summary of the main findings would be in place.  

Materials and Methods: Table 2 should be shifted after you have described the forming of the composite indicators, that is after the present row 177. The description of the composite indicators (especially I and II) should also be presented a bit clearer. Short descriptions of the methods should be added, too.

Results: The first paragraph (rows 183-185) is unnecessary, and rows 187-190 include annoying repetition. Tidy the runner bar of Table 3, and correct deciles. Check Table 5 (why all rows don't include three observations; e.g. column AgC14 Medium does not sum up correctly; shading is unnecessary).  In Table 6, why omit AgC20 while it is commented in the text? And correct AgC16 vs Region, and explain Cramer's V. You might also stretch Figure 1 somewhat to make it more illustrative. In Table 7, either open the acronym ANOVA in the text or write it open in the title.  Figure 2 needs readable axis labels, and shading is unnecessary as well as in Figure 3, which should actually be a table. 

Conclusions: If you insist on using Table 8 here, its should be more informative. Please consider a more comprehensive presentation, where the main findings of this paper compare to previous literature and to the policy demarcation presented in Table 1.  

References: Adequate, but omits notion of optimal tax theory (for example the works of of Mirrlees and Tuomala, Optimal  Income Tax and Redistribution). 

Author Response

First, we would like to thank you for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewers. We have made lots of modifications to our original manuscript accordingly. We would also like to address the following comments to our highly appreciated Reviewers on some critics, which may need some detailed explanation rather than just modifying the manuscript.

• Title: as we had 4 sub-hipotheses on the correlation from which 2 have been accepted and 2 have been rejected, we could not formulate a new title that would fit for the article. We believe that the title of our paper is clear on the subject of the research, and the Abstract points out the main contributions and results as well for the potential reader. 
• Exact hypotheses have been removed from the Abstract, and it has been simplified and made clearer (as other Reviewers requested it as well). 
• The Introducion section has been redesigned by clarifying some sentences, and adding new literature references and findings from the previous years. The last paragraph of the Introduction section have been restructured and the hypotheses have been articulated clearly, as other Reviewers suggested that it should be at the and of this section.
• Table 2 has been shifted as per the Reviewer's suggestion. Clarifications and methods on creating the composite indicators have been added.
• Results: the lines deemed unnecessary were deleted according to the proposal. Table 3 has been reedited. Table 5 has also been corrected. In table 6, to save space, we listed only those with a demonstrable connection (but we have now inserted this reason into the text of the paper); we corrected the header row as well. In the main text, we explained the Cramér’s V indicator. The dimensions of Figure 1 have been optimized. The title of Table 7 has been corrected. Figure 2 was considered unnecessary by two other reviewers, so we deleted it. Figure 3 has been converted into a table.
• Table 8 has been removed, but the corresponding text explaining the results of the hypotheses has been supplemented.
• The article has been supplemented with nearly 10 new, fresh references.

Regarding all the other comments not highlighted above, we made the necessary modifications in the manuscript. We do hope that you will find our rewised manuscript satisfying and recommendable for publishing!

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Here are my comments. The manuscript has been improved substantially; however, it needs further improvement. I am sorry, but it is severely structured.

Page 1: lines 36-37 do not work as the first lines and don’t connect with the remaining. It should be moved further down, probably as it continues sentence after line 41.

If you keep Table 1 in the introduction, although we commonly do not include a table in the introduction, it has to be further down. Continue your text from line 52 and then move to line 57, starting with “Classical economists …… “. 

The sentence in line 56 starts with Table 1 …., including the Table placed after this paragraph.

Then, you continue with line 73.

Table 9 - Correlation analysis. - In general, we present the correlation Table in a different format. This is too complicated to be understood. There are many examples in other papers of how a correlation Table should be presented. Also, a source is not needed.

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript.

Good luck!

Author Response

First, we would like to thank for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewer. We have made some modifications to our reviewed manuscript accordingly. We would also like to address the following comments to our highly appreciated Reviewers on some critics, which may need some detailed explanation rather than just modifying the manuscript:

• First paragraph of the Introduction has been moved down.
• As per suggested, we moved Table 1 further down, following the Reviewer’s instructions. 
• We simpflified Table 9. We are aware of how a correlation table should be presented, but given the number of the variables, we created a simplified version for highlighting only the relevant information, and added a note about that in the text. We also removed the source info on Table 9, as the Reviewer suggested.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper can be accepted in its current format.

Author Response

We would like to thank for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewer, and also thank you for accepting our paper in its current format. Some minor changes have been made according to another Reviewer's requests.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear article authors thank you for your work so far. Some elements have been corrected. There are three aspects that concern me as a reviewer:
Comment 1 Adding a new author to the article. Such an action is not very ethical after reviews in the reviewer's opinion.
Comment 2 As a rule of thumb, when discussing an issue, you should refer to a specific table if you cite data. Unfortunately, the text still lacks such citations in many passages. This is especially noticeable in the last part of the article, which the authors now call a discussion. Here the authors refer to individual hypotheses. It would have been useful to indicate, for example, that hypothesis xyz was proved in such and such a way, etc., as indicated by the data presented in the table (and give the table number).
Comment 3 Linguistically, the article should be further refined. In one article there are both American and British linguistic expressions for the same aspects. It is worth standardizing the language (for example, labor productivity and labour productivity).
Comment 4 We are almost in the second half of 2022, and the authors include the sentence In 2020, the pandemic has not yet influenced this trend, due to the exogenous nature of the crisis situation, so any substantial changes will be observed from tax year 2021 onwards, in our view. Such wording indicates that the authors have not thought through the article. We are in the year 2022, so it is already possible in many cases of OECD country data to assess whether the observed aspect in the study took place in tax year 2021. Such statements regarding specific countries would greatly enrich the discussion.
Comment 5 In the reviewer's opinion, the article needs a separate section for the conclusion and discussions. Currently, the last part of the article is just very mixed up.

Comment 6 The authors have added several items to the literature, but it is still not a professional review.

Author Response

First, we would like to thank for the detailed and dedicated work of our Reviewer. All other three Reviewers have accepted our paper in its latest version, so all the modifications we made was due to Reviewer 3's (your) requests. We have made some modifications to our revised manuscript accordingly. We would also like to address the following comments to our highly appreciated Reviewer on some critics, which may need some detailed explanation rather than just modifying the manuscript.

• Comment 1 Due to the comments sent by the 4 Reviewers, we deemed it necessary to involve an expert to the research, as a result of which a new co-author was added to the article. In our opinion, he contributed significantly to the quality improvement of the article, since 3 of the 4 Reviewers fully accepted our revised article.

• Comment 2 The relevant Tables and sources of data have been identified in text when making decisions on the hypotheses in the Discussion section of our paper.

• Comment 3 We sent our paper for native proofreading, who made the necessary changes. We didn’t find any further mixing between American and British linguistic expressions. If the Reviewer still has some concern on this matter, we would like to ask for specific highlighting on these expressions.

• Comment 4 We would like to thank the Reviewer for pointing this out. We looked into the newest available data, and mentioned relevant information on specific countries regarding this topic.

• Comment 5 In the newest version of the paper, the Conclusion and Discussion sections have been separated, and also supplemented with some new content.

• Comment 6 As per requested by Reviewer 3, the literature review has been further developed in the newest version of our manuscript, and also additional items have been added to the literature. 

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the revised document.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article contains all the necessary elements. It has been significantly improved linguistically. Any further comments already relate to editorial aspects, which will certainly be corrected at the stage of publication composition. Hence, my positive opinion of the article. I would only ask the authors to note that in scientific papers we do not write Slovak Republic or Czech Republic - we should write simply Slovakia and Czechia. It is advisable to use the current nomenclature of countries (especially Czechia, where in recent years considerable efforts have been made internationally to make the country's name stand out).

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for his detailed work in all the reviewing rounds. We accepted the last suggestion and changed Czech Republic to Czechia, Slovak Republic to Slovakia.