Die weit auseinanderklaffenden Mehrwertsteuersätze der europäischen Länder erweisen sich für die Vollendung des Binnenmarktes als Problem. Während z. B. in der Bundesrepublik und im Vereinigten Königreich die normalen Sätze 14 bzw. 15 vH betragen, liegen sie in den meisten anderen...

Because of the upswing in electronic commerce via the Internet, governments in the European Union and the United States have been discussing the shaping of an effective system of turnover taxation in cyberspace since the late 1990s, but have failed to agree on a definite tax system. An analysis...

In the tax policy debate, differentiation of value-added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns. Our quantitative analysis for Germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced. We find that the abolition of VAT differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects. Instead,...

Bei der Auslagerung staatlicher Tätigkeiten auf private Partner kommt es für den Bereich personalintensiver Dienstleistungen durch die anfallende deutsche Umsatzsteuer zu einer zusätzlichen Kostenbelastung, die die Hoheitsträger bisher oft von Outsourcing abhält. Für den Bereich der...

We study the welfare effects of combining the European Commission's proposal for VAT harmonization with different degrees of weakening of the 'quotient familial' , a feature of the French system of direct taxation which can be interpreted as aiming at taxing 'equivalised' household income. We...

This paper evaluates the political economy and structural factors explaining the collection efficiency of the Value Added Tax [VAT]. We consider the case where the collection efficiency is determined by the probability of audit and by the penalty on underpaying. Implementation lags imply that...

Should tax reforms be guided by rules of thumb suggested by the IMF, or directions or reform based on analytical approaches, such as optimal tax theory? In many cases, the applications of the directions of reform—which suggest a differentiation of the structure given distributional, incentive...

Für von der deutschen Umsatzsteuer befreite Finanzdienstleistungen ist der Vorsteuerabzug grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen. Da die meisten Finanzdienstleistungsunternehmen auch zum Vorsteuerabzug berechtigte Umsätze tätigen, sind die Eingangsumsätze dieser Unternehmen in einem zum...

This paper is concerned with a policy oriented macroeconomic experiment involving an 'international' economy with a relatively small 'home' country and a large 'foreign' country. It compares the economic performance of two alternative tax systems as a means to finance unemployment benefits: a...