In recent years, policymakers across the globe have become increasingly interested in not only the revenue consequences of tax policies but also their distributional impacts: that is, their impacts on different segments of the population. Such evidence can promote a more equitable and...

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...

Using a panel of 97 mostly developing and transitional countries for the period 1990-2011, this paper explores fiscal implications of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Em-ploying robust difference-in-difference specifications as well as semi-parametric methods, we find that...

Tax systems have changed considerably in the past three decades. These fundamental changes have been the result of economic globalization, new political stances, and also of developments in public finance thought. The chapters in this volume offer a critical review of those changes from the...

This paper discusses how joint cross country indirect tax initiatives can be used to achieve global rebalancing. We suggest that if China and Germany (as major surplus countries) switch their present VAT systems from a destination principle to an origin principle, and the US (as the major...

This paper examines empirically the impact of the shadow economy on indirect tax revenues in an unbalanced panel of 125 countries for the period 1990–2011. The same analysis is conducted excluding at first and then including international trade tax revenues in (total) indirect tax revenues, as...

Australia, New Zealand and France employ different indirect tax systems for wine that are a result of numerous factors such as economic, social, cultural and historical. This paper seeks to compare the indirect tax laws on wine of the ‘Old World' wine country (France) and the two ‘New World'...