This report examines the design and implementation of Devolve ICMS, a state-level personalized value added tax (VAT) cashback program in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, through the lens of the World Bank’s G2Px framework. Using administrative data, a representative beneficiary survey, and...

We analyze how value added taxes (VATs) affect labor market outcomes (firms' employee costs, wages, hours worked, employment). While VATs are designed to tax consumption, they are levied at the firm level, which creates potential spillovers to labor markets. We hypothesize that VATs affect wages...

We analyze how value added taxes (VATs) affect labor market outcomes (firms' employee costs, wages, hours worked, employment). While VATs are designed to tax consumption, they are levied at the firm level, which creates potential spillovers to labor markets. We hypothesize that VATs affect wages...

The taxing authority of subnational governments is limited by the geographic location of individuals and economic activity. The rise of telework decouples a worker's residence from the employer's location, creating challenges for personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and unemployment...

Europe does not suffer from a lack of tax instruments - it suffers from too many. Over the past decade, new layers of corporate, digital, and global tax rules have been added to an already complex system, often delivering limited revenues while increasing legal uncertainty, compliance costs, and...

The taxing authority of subnational governments is limited by the geographic location of individuals and economic activity. The rise of telework decouples a worker's residence from the employer's location, creating challenges for personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and unemployment...

Tax incentives play a crucial role in enhancing firm dynamism and aiding a nation in becoming a significant trade power. Drawing on data from the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms Database and the Chinese Customs Database for the period 2010 to 2013, this study employs a...

This note describes the Devolve-ICMS program, an innovative VAT cashback initiative aimed at refunding taxes to low-income households in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Using administrative records, the authors document several stylized facts about the workings of the program. First,...

We revisit the presence of international trade activity premia at the firm-level, as well as the presence of agglomeration economies, for the UK over the period 2008-2017. In doing so, we also look at the nexus between agglomeration economies and international trade premia and in particular at...

This paper investigates the drivers of Value Added Tax (VAT) compliance among small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana using a multi-dimensional approach. From a sample size of 520 SMEs, data was collected using structured questionnaires, while the dataset was analysed using Partial...

Governments worldwide are mandating e-invoicing and real-time VAT reporting, yet many cash-intensive service SMEs continue to under-report VAT, eroding fiscal revenues. This study investigates whether financial technology (FinTech) adoption can reduce this under-reporting among tourism SMEs in...

The paper examines the effects of a value-added tax (VAT) withholding regime implemented in Uganda using administrative data from the Uganda Revenue Authority. By using modern two-way fixed effects models, the research estimates the dynamic effects and finds that firms increase their reported...

We exploit Germany's temporary three-percentage-point VAT cut in the second half of 2020 to study the spending response to unconventional fiscal policy. We use survey and scanner data on household consumption expenditures and their perceived pass-through of the tax change into prices, and a RANK...

The statistics Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC) provide important information on the types of enterprises engaged in international trade in goods. Users can, among other aspects, obtain insights into which sectors of economic activity are most important in a country's imports and...

This paper examines the efficiency of the Value Added Tax (VAT), focusing on its role as a revenue-raising tool and its use to achieve non-revenue objectives. The analysis highlights the VAT's potential ability to generate revenue with minimal distortions, emphasizing its advantages over...

The conventional wisdom is that a big jurisdiction sets a higher tax rate than a small jurisdiction. We show this result arises due to simplifying assumptions that imply tax-base sensitivities are equal across jurisdictions. When more than two jurisdictions compete in commodity taxes, tax-base...

When confronted with sectoral shocks, policymakers often resort to targeted, sector-specific taxes in an \emph{ad hoc} fashion. Based on the New Keynesian Network model, we characterize the optimal tax response to sectoral shocks: it features twice as many tax instruments as there are sectors,...

How well raising tax rates can succeed for an economy intent on increasing tax revenue and narrowing the tax-to-GDP-ratio gap with other economies depends on its ability to meet certain conditions. This paper investigates these conditions and demonstrates that expanding the tax base as a...

Tax expenditures are tax relief measures targeted at some socially desirable activities or specific groups of taxpayers. This paper reviews issues related to tax expenditures in the EU and presents some stylised facts related to tax expenditures in personal income taxation (PIT), value-added...

Purpose: The present paper analyzes the current situation of taxation of financial services, pointing out the main alternative taxation methods. Design/methodology/approach: It is carried out an analysis of them, through the application of all of them to the same numerical example. Originality:...

This paper aims to test the hypothesis of the existence of significant tax competition between communes, which mainly concerns the share of value-added tax (VAT) proceeds, by exploring the system for allocating intergovernmental transfers in Morocco and analyzing the determinants of VAT...

The value-added tax (VAT) has proved to be a highly effective tool at raising revenue in developed and developing countries alike. However, the effective operation of the VAT breaks down in the presence of exemptions. Unlike zero rates, exemptions deny input tax credits, thereby increasing...

VAT is one of the most important sources of the public revenues in the EU Member States; therefore, it is crucial to determine the factors of VAT collection. So far, only a few researchers analyzed the influence of individual economic sectors on the indicators of VAT collection, namely...

The VAT Gap represents the difference between expected VAT revenues and those actually collected, reflecting compliance challenges, policy inefficiencies, and enforcement gaps. As part of the European Commission's ongoing efforts to improve VAT compliance and revenue collection, these 27 country...