Despite its complexity and the harsh reception the Canadian Goods and Services Tax (GST/HST) was greeted with at its inception in the early 1990s, the story emerging from Canada's value-added tax (VAT) experience is mostly a happy one. Indeed, a majority of the provinces will soon have replaced...

Canadian experience shows that a standard invoice-credit destination-based value added tax (VAT) can be successfully imposed at the subnational level of government. In fact, two different varieties of subnational VATs – the QST and the HST -- exist in Canada. The Quebec Sales Tax (QST) is...

Goods and services supplied by government entities, public sector bodies, nonprofit organizations, charitable organizations, and similar tax-exempt bodies (the PNC sector) are usually exempt under VAT. While there are very few conceptual arguments against the full taxation of such supplies under...

The treatment of financial services remains the last unconquered frontier in the design of a value-added tax (VAT)/goods and services tax (GST). Like the vast majority of its VAT/GST peers, Canada exempts most financial services under the GST. The author reviews the legal landscape surrounding...

For decades, the conventional view was that one could not impose a standard invoice-credit destination-based value added tax (VAT) at the subnational level of government. Canada's almost two decades of experience with just such a VAT demonstrates conclusively that this view is incorrect. Not...

In the post-COVID-19 environment, policy makers in many countries will be searching for revenues. Due to the political difficulty of creating new taxes or raising existing ones significantly, the focus may well shift to improving the yield of existing or reformed taxes. We explore VAT revenue...

With the federal government projecting swelling budget deficits in the Fall Economic Statement and then the 2021 Budget due to pandemic relief measures, debate is shifting to the revenue raising measures needed to pay for them. But before raising broad-based taxes, governments should evaluate...

This paper examines alternatives to the exempt VAT treatment of public bodies, non-profit organizations and charitable organizations (public service bodies). It focuses in particular on the Canadian VAT (the federal Goods and Services Tax) and its treatment of transactions involving public...

The biggest tax story of the last third of the 20 th century was the value-added tax (VAT). From its tentative beginnings in the reform of the French production tax in the early 1950s, by August 2000 some form of VAT existed in at least 123 countries. Few fiscal innovations have been adopted so...