Value Added Tax

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.

1. Introduction; 2. Forms of consumption-based taxes and altering the tax base; 3. Varieties of VAT in use; 4. Registration, taxpayer, and taxable business activity; 5. Taxable supplies of goods and services and tax invoices; 6. The tax credit mechanism; 7. Introduction to cross-border aspects of VAT; 8. Timing and valuation rules; 9. Zero rating and exemptions and government entities and nonprofit organizations; 10. VAT evasion and avoidance; 11. Gambling and financial services (other than insurance); 12. Insurance; 13. Real property; 14. An anatomy of China's VAT; 15. Interjurisdictional aspects of VAT in federal countries and common markets.