Explores how the value-added tax (VAT) has risen from relative obscurity to become one of the world's most dominant revenue instruments.

Does the design of a tax matter for growth? Assembling a novel dataset for 30 OECD countries over the 1970-2016 period, this paper examines whether the value added tax (VAT) may have different effects on long-run growth depending on whether it is raised through the standard rate or through C-efficiency (a measure of the departure of the VAT from a perfectly enforced tax levied at a single rate on all consumption). Our key findings are twofold. First, for a given total tax revenue, a rise in the VAT, financed by a fall in income taxes, promotes growth only when the VAT is raised through C-efficiency. Second, for a given VAT revenue, a rise in Cefficiency, offset by a fall in the standard rate, also promotes growth. The implication is thus that in OECD countries broadening the VAT base through fewer reduced rates and exemptions is more conducive to higher long-run growth than a rise in the standard rate.

The value-added tax (VAT) has the potential to generate significant government revenue. Despite its intrinsic self-enforcement capacity, many tax administrations find it challenging to refund excess input credits, which is critical to a well-functioning VAT system. Improperly functioning VAT refund practices can have profound implications for fiscal policy and management, including inaccurate deficit measurement, spending overruns, poor budget credibility, impaired treasury operations, and arrears accumulation.This note addresses the following issues: (1) What are VAT refunds and why should they be managed properly? (2) What practices should be put in place (in tax policy, tax administration, budget and treasury management, debt, and fiscal statistics) to help manage key aspects of VAT refunds? For a refund mechanism to be credible, the tax administration must ensure that it is equipped with the strategies, processes, and abilities needed to identify VAT refund fraud. It must also be prepared to act quickly to combat such fraud/schemes.

This book integrates legal, economic, and administrative materials about value added tax. Its principal purpose is to provide comprehensive teaching tools - laws, cases, analytical exercises, and questions drawn from the experience of countries and organizations from all areas of the world. It also serves as a resource for tax practitioners and government officials that must grapple with issues under their VAT or their prospective VAT. The comparative presentation of this volume offers an analysis of policy issues relating to tax structure and tax base as well as insights into how cases arising out of VAT disputes have been resolved. The authors have expanded the coverage to include new VAT related developments in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. A chapter on financial services has been added as well as an analysis of significant new cases.

Value-added tax, or VAT, first introduced less than 50 years ago, is now a pivotal component of tax systems around the world. The rapid and seemingly irresistible rise of the VAT is probably the most important tax development of the latter twentieth century, and certainly the most breathtaking. Written by a team of experts from the IMF, this book examines the remarkable spread and current reach of the innovative tax and draws lessons about the design and implementation of the VAT, as experienced by different countries around the world. How efficient is it as a tax, is it fair, and is it suitable for all countries? These are among the questions raised. This highly informative and well-researched book also looks at the likely future of the tax.

This paper estimates the pass through of VAT changes to consumer prices, using a unique dataset providing disaggregated, monthly data on prices and VAT rates for 17 Eurozone countries over 1999-2013. Pass through is much less than full on average, and differs markedly across types of VAT change. For changes in the standard rate, for instance, final pass through is about 100 percent; for reduced rates it is significantly less, at around 30 percent; and for reclassifications it is essentially zero. We also find: differing dynamics of pass through for durables and non-durables; no significant difference in pass through between rate increases and decreases; signs of non-monotonicity in the relationship between pass through and the breadth of the consumption base affected; and indications of significant anticipation effects together with some evidence of lagged effects in the two years around reform. The results are robust against endogeneity and attenuation bias.