Value Added Tax: A Comparative Approach in Theory and Practice

This comparative examination of Value Added Taxes worldwide covers both theory and practice and is intended for an audience of students, teachers, researchers, government officials, and practitioners. The authors are American law professors, both teachers of courses on VAT and long time members of the ABA's Committee on Value Added Tax (recently the Committee on Alternative Tax Systems).

The book begins with an extensive survey of VAT principles as enunciated during the second half of the twentieth century in official reports and by economists and other tax authorities. Included are basic statistical data and an appendix delineating the global spread of the tax together with rates in the year 2000. Thereafter, the authors present the legal concepts and definitions displayed in VAT laws and elaborated by the courts of Europe and New Zealand. Comparison is made from time to time with American experience with state retail sales taxes. Application of VATs to particular activities is examined in separate chapters devoted to banking, insurance, real estate, and nonprofit organizations. Particular attention is paid to cross-border situations whether international, within the European Union and other country groupings, or within federal countries. The special problems of telecommunications, transportation and E-commerce are covered together in one chapter.

A feature of the book of particular use to practitioners as well as students and scholars is an appendix of more than 100 pages, which sets forth the consolidated text of the European Union's famous Sixth Directive. It serves as the governing statutory document for the VATs in EU member countries and is the subject of interpretation and application in many of the litigated cases included or referred to in the book.



Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

Alan Schenk is Professor of Law at Wayne State University School of Law. He is active in advising governments on the design and operation of their VATs.

Oliver Oldman is Learned Hand Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School and for many years been an active participant in the modernization of many tax systems in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.