I leverage a Pakistani tax reform that cuts the tax rate on the supply chains of five major industries of the country from 15% to 0% to cast light on the extent of, and mechanisms driving, VAT noncompliance in a representative emerging economy. I find that firms overclaim refunds by 22% and...

We use rich, micro-level tax return data for the entire population of small and mediumsized German restaurants and find empirical evidence that these firms employ the misclassification of meal consumption type as a VAT evasion strategy. Using difference-in-differences as well as...

I leverage a Pakistani tax reform that cuts the tax rate on the supply chains of five major industries of the country from 15% to 0% to cast light on the extent of, and mechanisms driving, VAT noncompliance in a representative emerging economy. I find that firms overclaim refunds by 22% and...

Assessing tax gaps-the difference between the potential and actual taxes raised-plays a vital role in achieving positive domestic revenue objectives through improved and reformed taxation. This is particularly pertinent for growth outcomes in developing countries. This study uses a bottom-up...

Improving tax collection is essential if developing economies are to avoid over-reliance on external donor funds and loans. Revenue authorities in the Global South have recently adopted new policy tools to improve domestic revenue mobilization through taxes. One such new policy is a withholding...

Invoices document economic transactions and are thus critical to assess tax liabilities. We study a reform in the Dominican Republic that aimed to integrate invoice management into a broader, more comprehensive, risk-based compliance strategy. By rationing authorized invoices based on an extra...

We develop a tax competition model that allows for the setting of both an origin-based and a destination-based commodity tax rate in the presence of avoidance and evasion. In the presence of evasion, jurisdictions will give cross-border shoppers tax preferential treatment, thus not fully...

Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde von Andrea Gebauer in weiten Teilen während ihrer Tätigkeit als Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am ifo Institut erstellt und im September 2007 abgeschlossen. Gegenstand der Arbeit ist die seit 2001 festzustellende schwache Entwicklung der deutschen...

This paper takes stock of what is known about the efficacy of actual Value Added Tax (VAT) systems, nearly 100 years since the tax was conceived. Existing VAT systems fall short of the idealized version on many dimensions, some by design and others unintended. Actual VATs might therefore have...

This paper studies the impact of replacing sales tax by value-added tax (VAT) on production efficiency and informality among Indian states. We disentangle the production efficiency gains caused by removing the distortions of sales tax from the increase in enforcement caused by VAT's input refund...