The European experience shows that destination-based state VATs can be administered successfully in common markets without border controls, such as the EU, and in federations, such as the US. The existence of a (supra)national VAT would facilitate but is not a conditio sine qua non for...

Sijbren Cnossen is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands, and adviser of CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. He has held appointments in tax law and economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Harvard University, New York University, and...

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...

Later this year, the European Commission has to submit a report to the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament with its views on tobacco tax policy in the EU. A 2004 publication issued by the Commission expressed the beliefs that tobacco consumption should be controlled by increasing...

In the course of introducing a market-oriented tax system, most Central and Eastern European countries are actively considering the merits of a value-added tax (VAT). This paper examines a wide range of social, economic, structural, and administrative issues that are pertinent to the...

Instead of abolishing internal border controls in 1993, the European Union (EU) replaced them with VAT and statistical requirements that appear to be just as onerous. For Dutch businesses, the compliance costs of the new requirements are, on average, 5 per cent of the value of their intra-EU...

Farmers are often exempted from VAT for administrative and political reasons. But this means that the VAT on their inputs cannot be ‘washed out' through the tax deduction/credit mechanism. To compensate farmers for the uncompensated VAT on inputs, the EU has devised a flat-rate scheme that...

This paper explores the taxation of corporations in the wider context of capital income taxation. The pros and cons of various income-based and cash-flow forms of corporation tax (CT) are discussed. The paper concludes that the dual income tax (DIT), which taxes all capital income at the...