In an earlier article titled as ‘Service Tax on Lawyers: A levy short lived?' [Excise and Customs Reporter Vol. 191(4), pp. 55SF-60SF] I had an occasion to point out that the levy of service tax on individual lawyers was an experiment out of the various experiments conducted by the Government...

In most jurisdictions there are three separate spheres of transfer pricing analysis - income tax, customs and VAT. Although they share policy objectives, terminology and frequently borrowing methodologies from one another these domestic transfer pricing systems are not in harmony. Businesses...

This Handbook entry presents a conceptual, normative overview of the subject of taxation. It emphasizes the relationships among the main functions of taxation—notably, raising revenue, redistributing income, and correcting externalities—and the mapping between these functions and various...

On October 31, 2012, the Commissioner on Internal Revenue issued Revenue Memorandum Circular No. 65-2012 (“RMC 65-2012”) declaring that all association dues, membership fees, and other assessment/charges collected by condominium corporations shall now constitute income payments or...

The reform process for the indirect taxation regime in India has been ongoing for some time, with the prevailing view being that simplification of tax regime and a principle-laden approach was an essential concomitant in the outlook of a developed nation. Much debate has ensued and during the...

This article is a commentary on the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the Vodafone case, C-74/78 on progressive turnover taxes.In our view, the Court’s decision provides clarifications for ascertaining the compatibility of domestic turnover taxes with the fundamental...

The “pre-collection” of tax on imputed consumption generated by owner-occupied housing plays a crucial role in both consumption tax theory and real-world tax regimes. However, even under current VAT systems with the widest tax bases, the taxation of imputed housing consumption is incomplete...

This paper discusses the way in which the Colombian Tax Code determines the taxable base of the value added tax (VAT). Our analysis shows that the Colombian legislation fails to exploit some of the theoretical advantages of the tax, as it induces cascading and distortions of input prices in...

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...