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Retail sales tax versus value-added tax

By Daniel Shaviro

Bruce Bartlett argues against the Fair Tax here: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/bartlett_fair_tax.pdf

I generally don't bother discussing the Fair Tax, as it appears to be a dead horse both intellectually and politically. Even assuming one wants a flat rate consumption tax with no zero bracket, why use the retail sales tax model instead of a value-added tax (VAT)? The latter can lead to the same overall result but with better enforcement capabilities since the revenue authorities can cross-check rebates against taxes remitted on inter-business transactions, and since it can be embarrassing for a business to claim rebates on purchases without admitting to any sales on items that are no longer observable in inventory.

That said, I have learned more recently from people in VAT nations that the tradeoff is not quite as clearcut as I had thought. E.g., Europe has had fun lately with "carousel fraud," in which one side to an inter-business transaction claims a rebate, while the other side disappears before paying tax on the offsetting receipt. Also, U of Sydney law prof Graeme Cooper won, to my mind, the 2007 tax article title-of-the-year contest with his SSRN-posted piece, "The Discrete Charm of the VAT," available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1027512, in which he argues that the administrative tradeoffs are closer than various of us had been inclined to believe.

Full post as published by Start Making Sense on January 03, 2008 (boomark / email).