Value Added Tax : A Comparative Approach

This book integrates legal, economic, and administrative materials about the value added tax (VAT) to present the only comparative approach to the study of VAT law. The comparative presentation of this volume offers an analysis of policy issues relating to tax structure and tax base as well as insights into how cases arising out of VAT disputes have been resolved. Its principal purpose is to provide comprehensive teaching tools – laws, cases, analytical exercises, and questions drawn from the experience of countries and organizations around the world. This second edition includes new VAT-related developments in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia and adds new chapters on VAT avoidance and evasion and on China's VAT. Designed to illustrate, analyze, and explain the principal theoretical and operating features of value added taxes, including their adoption and implementation, this book will be an invaluable resource for tax practitioners and government officials.

Alan Schenk is a distinguished professor at Wayne State University Law School. He has taught VAT at other universities in the United States and abroad. Schenk is the author of numerous articles and of several books on value added tax and goods and services tax, in addition to the first edition of this book, which was co-authored with the late Oliver Oldman. For the past eighteen years, he served as a technical advisor for the IMF's legal department, drafting VAT laws and regulations. He has consulted for foreign governments, testified before the US Congress, and served as an expert in arbitrations involving VAT.

Victor Thuronyi served as lead counsel (taxation) in the IMF's legal department until 2013, where he coordinated the department's program of technical assistance in tax law, focusing on drafting new tax laws or on substantial revision of existing ones, as well as continuing to teach. He is the author of Comparative Tax Law (2003) and numerous articles and book chapters on tax law and policy, and he is the editor of and a contributing author to Tax Law Design and Drafting (2000).

Wei Cui is an associate professor in the faculty of law at the University of British Columbia. Prior to 2013, he taught and practiced law in Beijing and assisted Chinese government agencies on a variety of tax legislative and regulatory matters involving business and individual income taxation, the VAT, and tax administration. He served as senior tax counsel for the China Investment Corporation between 2009 and 2010, and he is a current member of the Permanent Scientific Committee of the International Fiscal Association.