This paper provides a detailed outline of most of the major features of the Australian goods and services tax (GST). As well as explaining and evaluating the operation of the GST law, the paper compares the Australian GST with the equivalent features of the European VAT. The paper was first...

Graham Hill was for many years the pre-eminent tax judge in the Federal Court of Australia. Throughout his career as a tax practitioner, and then as a judge, he taught stamp duties, sales tax, and later goods and services tax (GST/VAT), in the Masters of Law program at Sydney Law School. His...

In this chapter, we reflect on the issues of the traditional scope of VAT and how the VAT deals with the challenges created by the sharing economy, “free” digital services, and crypto-currencies. We consider the issues from the perspective of our own jurisdictions (Australia, South Africa,...

How should immovable property (in particular residential property) be treated under a value added tax? This paper considers whether proposals to tax all sales of immovable property (including consumer to consumer sales) are preferable to existing models (in which the first sale of new...

The treatment of government under the value added tax is an ongoing source of difficulty for many countries, including the Member States of the EU. It is often suggested that the problems created by exempting government from VAT (or treating it as out of scope) can be systematically addressed by...

The quintessentially eccentric style in which the Australian GST law is drafted has led the High Court of Australia to suggest that Australia's GST differs from other value added taxes in respect of a concept that is basic to all such taxes: the notion of a ‘supply for consideration'. This...

This working paper, explains and evaluates key aspects of Australia's GST (a value added tax), focussing on aspects of the law that are of relevance to a comparative tax law scholars considering how legal and policy design features of VAT/GST laws affect the level of simplicity/complexity of the...

This case note discusses a recent decision handed down by the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia on the deductibility of input tax under Australia's goods and services tax (GST), a credit-invoice method VAT. The case dealt with input tax incurred in the course of providing subsidised...

This working paper gives a broad-sweep consideration to the future of VAT in a digital economy, focussing on four broad, interrelated questions: does anything need to be done, and if yes, who should do it, what should be done, and how should it be done? Noting the historical development of the...

This paper critically evaluates the legal design of Australia’s GST (a value added tax) in light of recent OECD work on the consumption tax treatment of cross-border transactions. An emerging consensus from the OECD suggests that, for business to business supplies, consumption taxes should use...