Recently, in CIBC World Markets Inc. v. R. (“CIBC case”), the Chief Justice of the Tax Court of Canada (“TCC”) was faced with an issue that was novel to Canada's consumption tax jurisprudence. Can a GST registrant retrospectively change its method for allocating input taxes between its...

Taxation has become an indispensable part of modern economic systems worldwide, and there are a wide variety of different tax models with different policies, regulations, and collection systems that governments can choose from. Nations have realized the need to exercise care and caution in...

In ECJ Case 587/10 (Vogtländische Straβen-,Tief- und Rohrleitungsbau GmbH Rodewisch (VSTR) v. Finanzamt Plauen) an American firm, Atlantic International Trading Company (AIT) is a middleman in an otherwise all-European VAT triangulation. AIT appears to have approached its compliance...

Every VAT/GST allows missing trader fraud. The fraud is simple, and can be simply prevented (with technology). The fraud arises when a business makes a purchase without paying VAT, collects VAT on an onward sale, and then “disappears” without remitting the tax. Missing trader fraud is common...

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...

Missing trader intra-community (MTIC) fraud has been slowly morphing from cell phones and computer chips to other commodities. In the last few months however MTIC made a dramatic appearance in tradable CO2 permits. It closed exchanges and prompted France and the Netherlands to unilaterally...

Tax scholarship typically presumes the state’s power to tax and therefore rarely concerns itself with analyzing which relationships between a government and a potential taxpayer normatively justify taxation, and which do not. This paper presents the case for undertaking such an analysis as a...

Value added tax (VAT) has been a handy instrument, particularly in the financing of European governments during the last quarter of the twentieth century, when their expenditures were rising rapidly. This suggested to many that there could be an association between the share of VAT revenues in...

The sharing economy, underpinned by digital platforms like Airbnb and Uber, which pair individuals' needs and wants, from accommodation to rides, is on the ascent. These new business models, where capital and labour are provided by several dispersed individuals rather than by a single...

The VAT e-commerce package heavily reforms rules applying to imports of small consignment goods. Yet, import VAT literature strictly focuses on a VAT perspective only. Vice versa, this article, favouring a customs law point of view, underlines issues that might undermine the effective...