Smoking is the single largest cause of avoidable death in the European Union accounting for over half a million deaths each year. One in ten of all 11-year olds have been drunk twice or more times, possibly causing lasting physical and mental harm. Electronic gaming machines are the crack...

The Netherlands has abolished the tax on actual personal capital income and has replaced it by a presumptive capital income tax, which is in fact a net wealth tax. This paper contrasts this wealth tax with a conventional realization-based capital gains tax, a retrospective capital gains tax with...

This paper provides estimates of the external costs of harmful alcohol use in the European Union (EU) and confronts them with the alcohol excise duty collections per adult and per litre of pure alcohol in the various Member States. In all but one Member State, drinkers do not appear to pay...

Since the late 1960s, the VAT has become one of the mainstays of the tax systems in over one hundred countries. Apparently, its revenue raising and neutrality properties make it an attractive tax in a rapidly integrating, high-tax world. Following an overview of VATs throughout the world, this...

The harmonized European value-added tax (VAT) is anything but a modern consumption tax that taxes all goods and services at a uniform rate. As exemplified by an analysis of the Dutch version, some 60% of the base is exempted, that is, not taxed on output but on inputs. This has serious...

This paper examines the trade-offs between tax autonomy and fiscal neutrality that the Member States of the European Union face in coordinating their taxes on consumption, labor and capital. One of the main messages is that in many cases tax reform should precede tax harmonization, mainly...