Refunds are an essential feature of well-functioning VAT systems and take up a sizeable portion of government spending. In South Africa, refunds amount to 50 per cent of gross VAT collection, representing a substantial transfer from the government to taxpayers that has to occur at relatively...

How does the fragmentation of local governments affect economic activity? We examine this question in the context of a major period of decentralization in Indonesia in which the number of local governments increased by 50 percent within a decade. Exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing...

In South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018), the Supreme Court empowered states to require remote sellers to remit sales taxes, thereby eliminating a persistent difference in the tax treatment of online and brick and mortar commerce. Despite the attention this decision received, we know little about how...

This paper takes stock of what is known about the efficacy of actual Value Added Tax (VAT) systems, nearly 100 years since the tax was conceived. Existing VAT systems fall short of the idealized version on many dimensions, some by design and others unintended. Actual VATs might therefore have...

The South Dakota vs. Wayfair (2018) Supreme Court decision changed a long-standing difference in the way U.S. sales tax administrations treated online and brick-and-mortar commerce. Online retailers now have to remit sales taxes just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts in most states....

In this note, we present new evidence about firm remittance in India, and discuss the remarkable similarity and prominence in the role of businesses in tax remittance in three very different tax systems – India, the United States and the United Kingdom. Previous studies of developed countries...