Value-added tax, or VAT, first introduced less than 50 years ago, is now a pivotal component of tax systems around the world. The rapid and seemingly irresistible rise of the VAT is probably the most important tax development of the latter twentieth century, and certainly the most breathtaking. Written by a team of experts from the IMF, this book examines the remarkable spread and current reach of the innovative tax and draws lessons about the design and implementation of the VAT, as experienced by different countries around the world. How efficient is it as a tax, is it fair, and is it suitable for all countries? These are among the questions raised. This highly informative and well-researched book also looks at the likely future of the tax.

Global Taxation investigates the global transition to modern taxation from the 18th century to today. Modern taxation refers to the broad-based tax instruments that allowed for the emergence of big government as we know it today, including, most prominently, income taxes and general consumption taxes. The volume draws on a new historical dataset of tax introduction worldwide to map the global spread of modern taxes descriptively and to explore its correlates analytically. It makes four contributions to the literature. First, it corrects a pervasive Western bias in historical political economy and fiscal sociology. Most of this literature focuses heavily on the tax policy of advanced democracies in Europe. The chapters of this volume explore how far Western theories and insights travel to non-Western contexts. Second, the volume mitigates a recency bias in much of the macro-quantitative literature in comparative political economy and public finance. The chapters investigate whether insights travel across time from recent to more distant periods of observation. Third, the volume compensates for the substantive preoccupation of extant research with the personal income tax and the VAT by extending the analysis to other important tax instruments: the corporate income tax, the inheritance tax, non-VAT sales taxes, and social security contributions. Finally, the volume goes beyond the prevalent methodological nationalism in fiscal sociology and comparative political economy. It shows that non-sovereign tax introductions were common in colonial and imperial settings and compares analytically how the logic of these non-sovereign introductions differed from sovereign ones.

The authors observe that consumption taxation is superior to income taxation because it does not penalize saving and investment and propose that the U.S. income tax system be completely replaced by a progressive consumption tax. They argue that the X tax, developed by the late David Bradford, offers the best form of progressive consumption taxation for the United States and outline concrete proposals for the X tax's treatment of numerous specific economic issues.

An engaging and enlightening account of taxation told through lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the world and across the ages Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts—and, in repressing it, ended up burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed astonishingly, as when, in eighteenth-century Britain, a cut in the tax on tea massively increased revenue. In this entertaining book, two leading authorities on taxation, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, provide a fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic—from the plundering described by Herodotus and an Incan tax payable in lice to the (misremembered) Boston Tea Party and the scandals of the Panama Papers. Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of tax rascals, and even a few tax heroes. While it is hard to fathom the inspiration behind such taxes as one on ships that tended to make them sink, Keen and Slemrod show that yesterday’s tax systems have more in common with ours than we may think. Georgian England’s window tax now seems quaint, but was an ingenious way of judging wealth unobtrusively. And Tsar Peter the Great’s tax on beards aimed to induce the nobility to shave, much like today’s carbon taxes aim to slow global warming. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is a surprising and one-of-a-kind account of how history illuminates the perennial challenges and timeless principles of taxation—and how the past holds clues to solving the tax problems of today.

Explores how the value-added tax (VAT) has risen from relative obscurity to become one of the world's most dominant revenue instruments.

This book provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of VATs in Africa. It enables policymakers and students to examine Africa's VAT systems and to ascertain how it can be modernized to finance human and economic development.

Tax revenues pay for many public services, including roads, health care, and education. However, it has become a contentious political issue of public debate. In this volume, Stephen Smith explains its history and its main principles; arguing that we'd all benefit from an understanding of the role of taxation in society.

A thoughtful and surprising argument for American tax reform, arguably the most overdue political debate facing the nation, from one of the most respected political and economic thinkers, advisers, and writers of our time. THE UNITED STATES TAX CODE HAS UNDERGONE NO SERIOUS REFORM SINCE 1986. Since then, loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions have distorted its clarity, increased its inequity, and frustrated our ability to govern ourselves. By tracing the history of our own tax system and assessing the way other countries have solved similar problems, Bruce Bartlett explores the surprising answers to all these issues, giving a sense of the tax code’s many benefits—and its inevitable burdens. From one of the most respected political and economic thinkers, advisers, and writers of our time, The Benefit and the Burden is a thoughtful and surprising argument for American tax reform.

This volume presents sixteen essays by comparative historical scholars who offer a survey of the new fiscal sociology.

This new and updated edition of The Flat Tax—called "the bible of the flat tax movement" by Forbes—explains what's wrong with our present tax system and offers a practical alternative. Hall and Rabushka set forth what many believe is the most fair, efficient, simple, and workable tax reform plan on the table: tax all income, once only, at a uniform rate of 19 percent.