More than 140 countries worldwide—including all European countries—levy a Value-Added Tax (VAT) on goods and services. As today’s tax map shows, although harmonized to some extent by the European Union (EU), EU member states’ VAT rates vary across countries. The VAT is a consumption tax assessed on the value added in each production stage of […]
In 2017, Value-Added Tax (VAT) accounted for 62.3 percent of consumption tax revenues in the OECD on average, making it an important source of government revenue. The European Commission (EC) recently published the latest version of their annual report on the “VAT Gap” in 2018 for the 28 Member States of the European Union at […]
Up until now value-added taxes (VAT) were considered to be highly regressive taxes. Numerous studies have found that VAT appears to be regressive when measured as a percentage of current income. Nevertheless, a recent OECD paper used household expenditures microdata from 27 OECD countries to reassess this often-made conclusion that VAT is regressive. Value-added taxes […]
On July 21 the Brazilian government sent to its Congress the first stage of its proposed tax reform. The proposal includes unifying two levies on consumption, the so-called PIS and COFIN taxes, into a 12% value-added tax (VAT). Brazil has one of the world’s most complex tax systems. According to the World Bank while a […]