The paper discusses the main arguments for destination- versus origin-based commodity taxation in the European Community's Internal Market. Destination-based solutions necessarily distort commodity trade in the Community because final con-sumer purchases can only be taxed in the origin country....

We introduce cross-border shopping and indirect tax competition into a model of optimal taxation. The Atkinson-Stiglitz result that indirect taxation cannot improve the efficiency of information-constrained tax-transfer policies, and that indirect taxes should not be differentiated across goods,...