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A report by the state-run Bahar News on August 31, 2025, sheds light on the harsh reality of Iran’s tax system, exposing how the burden falls almost entirely on workers and wage earners. The outlet wrote: “Taxes are an additional burden imposed on the exhausted working class. Wages are insufficient, rents exceed workers’ salaries, and buying most goods, including some basic food items, has become a dream for many employed and retired workers.”
This rare acknowledgment highlights the regime’s strategy of extracting revenue directly and indirectly from the pockets of workers. The value-added tax (VAT), now at 10 percent, even applies to basic services such as cleaning and restaurants, tightening the daily squeeze on low-income families. Official statistics confirm this pressure: “In August, point-to-point inflation for households reached 42.4 percent, while annual inflation stood at 36.3 percent.”
As a result, workers pay what economists call an “inflation tax,” while, as the report admits, “the wealthy, those benefiting from rent-seeking, speculators, and currency traders accumulate more wealth with every price increase.”
#Iran News: New Anti-Speculation #Tax Forces Citizens to Shoulder Regime-Created Inflationhttps://t.co/LkSx8ZiL2q
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 17, 2025
Workers Carry the Burden, the Rich Escape
According to official figures, in the first four months of the current year, the government collected 396 trillion tomans in tax revenues. A large portion of this came from direct and indirect taxation of employees. By contrast, wealth taxes amounted to only 12.5 trillion tomans, while workers and employees in both the private and public sectors paid 70 trillion tomans in taxes.
Labor activist Kazem Farajollahi summarized the injustice bluntly: “Iran is probably the only country in the world where the poor are taxed more heavily than the rich. The percentage and amount of tax, compared to workers’ incomes, are greater than those imposed on the wealthy.” He pointed to hidden taxes from inflation and consumption taxes (VAT) as the two main tools of exploitation, stressing: “Workers lose 10 percent of their entire salaries through VAT, while the bulk of the upper-class incomes usually escape taxation.”
The report further revealed a glaring contradiction: owners of luxury properties worth over 100 to 200 billion tomans collectively paid just 98 billion tomans in taxes, while wage earners living below the poverty line paid 70 trillion tomans. These figures demonstrate a deliberate policy of draining the poor while protecting the wealthy.
Amid soaring political dissent in #Iran, tax evasion emerges as a social response to the regime's overtaxing as people try to thwart exploitation by their oppressors. pic.twitter.com/9E6hVt5yaO
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) February 18, 2024
The Untouchable Networks of Power
However, Bahar News avoids addressing the deeper roots of this inequality. Why do luxury properties and billion-toman vehicles contribute so little to tax revenues? The answer lies in the vast financial empires operating under the protection of the regime’s Supreme Leader. Institutions such as the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO), the Foundation of the Oppressed, Astan Quds Razavi, and other regime-controlled conglomerates enjoy sweeping tax exemptions while mocking economic transparency. This entrenched “structural rent” enables the ruling elite to amass massive fortunes without contributing to the nation’s costs.
The issue goes far beyond unjust taxes on workers. It reflects an exploitative and discriminatory system that shields regime affiliates with tax exemptions while relentlessly extracting resources from wage earners. As long as these exemptions and rents remain in place, any public debate within the regime about taxation serves only to sustain this class-based system of plunder.
March 3—Lamerd, southern Iran
Contract workers of the oil sector in the Parsian operational area of Larmerd rally to protest salary cuts, tax increases and non-payment of claims and arrears.#IranProtestspic.twitter.com/YBeznN80u9— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) March 3, 2025
The question remains: can such an arrangement prevent an explosion of public anger? When the majority of society buckles under inflation, soaring prices, and crushing taxes while a privileged minority tied to Khamenei accumulates untouchable wealth, the social divide inevitably deepens into crisis.
Bahar News, while exposing some aspects of the tax burden on workers, avoids crossing the ultimate red line—the tax-exempt empire of institutions tied to Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Yet it is precisely here that the roots of inequality and exploitation lie.