关于增值税的税收筹划认识与思考 外文原文.doc

Value-Added Taxes in Developing and Transitional Countries: Lessons and Questions Richard M. Bird University of Toronto - Joseph L. Rotman School of Management Abstract：The value-added tax has, in recent decades, become the most important single tax in most developing and transitional economies. This paper reviews some problems that have emerged as important as more experience has been gained with how VATs really work in many such countries and suggests some lines of research that need to be explored further to overcome those problems. 1. Introduction Few fiscal issues are more important in developing and transitional economies (DTE) than the value-added tax (VAT). Over the last few decades, VAT has swept the world. The principal reasons for the rapid spread of this form of taxation were, first, the early adoption of this form of taxation in the European Union (EU) and, second, the key role played in spreading the word to DTE by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular and by international agencies and advisors more generally. The success of VAT in the EU showed that VAT worked. The consistent support and advocacy of this form of taxation by the IMF and others in a variety of countries, first in Latin America, and then around the world, encouraged and facilitated the adoption of VAT by countries with much less developed economic and administrative structures than those in the original EU member states. At the same time, for various reasons of their own, all the non-EU countries of the OECD apart from the United States have also, one by one, introduced VATs, most recently Australia in 2000. Of course, to a certain extent, as the background paper (ITD, 2005) observes, the VAT label covers a variety of taxes in different countries. Countries that belong to the EU have necessarily all adopted the same model of VAT, essentially as laid out by the Sixth Directive of 1977, although some important differences remain between VATs in EU member states (Math