The Rise of the Value-Added Tax

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 The Rise of the Value-Added Tax is the third major fully-authored book length release on the subject in a few years, following Alan Schenk, Victor Thuronyi, and Wei Cui, Value Added Tax: A Comparative Approach (2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, 2015), and Richard M Bird and Pierre-Pascal Gendron, The VAT in Developing and Transitional Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2011 [2007]). Incidentally, Schenk et al. was published in the same series as the book under review. For a detailed review of the latter book, see Pierre-Pascal Gendron, ‘Value Added Tax: A Comparative Approach, second edition’ (2016) 69 National Tax Journal 241. The present review follows a similar format.

2 See, for example, Schenk, Thuronyi, and Cui (n 1), as well as Bird and Gendron (n 1).

3 For an alternative view of the book written in a different format, see the short review by Roger H Gordon, ‘The Rise of the Value Added Tax’ (2016) 54 Journal of Economic Literature 243.

4 The author actually presents the case for the selection of case studies at the very end of Chapter 5, in Section 4.1.

5 See description of those norms in Table 1.

6 Pierre-Pascal Gendron, ‘Canada’s GST at 21: A Tax Expenditure View of Reform’ (2012) 1 World Journal of VAT/GST Law 125.

7 Pierre-Pascal Gendron, ‘Policy Forum: Canada’s GST and Financial Services—Where Are We Now and Where Could We Be?’ (2016) 64 Canadian Tax Journal 401.

8 See section on Canada in Robert F van Brederode and Pierre-Pascal Gendron, ‘The Taxation of Cross-Border Interstate Sales in Federal or Common Markets’ (2013) 2 World Journal of VAT/GST Law 1.

9 Sijbren Cnossen, ‘Mobilizing VAT Revenues in African Countries’ (2015) 22 International Tax and Public Finance 1077.

10 The IMF has published a number of candid assessments of the situation in developing countries. See: International Monetary Fund, Current Challenges in Revenue Mobilization: Improving Tax Compliance, Staff Report (IMF, 2015); David Kloeden, Revenue Administration Reforms in Anglophone Africa Since the Early 1990s, IMF Working Paper WP/11/162 (IMF, 2011); and Michael Keen and Mario Mansour, Revenue Mobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges from Globalization, IMF Working Paper WP/09/157 (IMF, 2009).

11 For a through discussion of tax incentives including those involving indirect taxes, see: Alexander Klemm and Stefan van Parys, ‘Empirical Evidence on the Effects of Tax Incentives’ (2012) 19 International Tax and Public Finance 393; and Alexander Klemm, ‘Causes, Benefits, and Risks of Tax Incentives’ (2010) 17 International Tax and Public Finance 315–336.

12 For a similar approach, see Richard M Bird and Pierre-Pascal Gendron, ‘Sales Taxes in Canada: the GST-HST-QST-RST “System”’ (2010) 63 Tax Law Review 517.

13 Without insisting as much, this concurs with the key criticism of the book by Gordon (n 3) 244.

14 See Bird and Gendron (n 1).