The paper discusses the harmonization of value added tax rates in the European Community1s internal market from a legal and from an economic viewpoint. There is a fundamental trade-off between the goal of avoiding tax-induced distortions in EC commodity trade and the aim to maintain national...

An optimal taxation approach is employed to discuss the interaction between factor and commodity taxes for a small open economy when both profit-earning firms and domestic consumers are imperfectly mobile internationally. In this framework, we demonstrate two main results: first, a...

There is little doubt that the step towards a monetary union in Europe will increase both the distortionary effects of existing differences in national tax systems and the intensity of tax competition for internationally mobile commodity and factor tax bases. This paper discusses selected issues...

The paper employs a standard model of dynamic price competition to study how international principles of value-added taxation affect the stability of collusive agreements when producers in an international duopoly agree not to export into each other's home market and tax rates differ across...