This article presents a new conceptual framework for research into tax fraud and law enforcement. Informed by research approaches from across tax law, public economics, criminology, criminal justice, economics of crime, and regulatory theory, it assesses the effectiveness, and the legitimacy, of...

The EU VAT system, like many VAT systems around the world, exempts insurance and financial services. As opposed to merit goods or services, such as health or education, the rationale for exempting these services is not to diminish the regressivity of VAT, or to encourage their consumption, but...

This short paper reviews the EU proposals for a definite VAT system, concluding that, together with the newly approved digital package, they represent therefore real progress the previous VAT system. Yet, they are not enough. A fair, efficient and fraud-proof EU VAT system requires, in addition...

The traditional view with regard to general consumption taxes is that excluding certain products from the base decreases their natural regressivity. Whilst this view has been consistently questioned over the last 40 years, public perceptions are still heavily influenced by it. Based upon...

The taxation of financial services is one of the most vexing aspects of a VAT. Conceptually, VAT should apply to any fee for service but where financial services are concerned there is a difficulty in identifying the taxable amount, ie the value added by financial institutions. As a result, most...