At the risk of repeating some of the many good and sensible things said in the background paper, this section discusses briefly five major lessons that emerge from the extensive experience with introducing and implementing 方便食品发展新趋势 VATs in DTE. First, and most importantly, as the background paper says, VAT works. Despite some recent criticisms by reputable analysts, for the most part it remains true that, if a country needs or wants a general sales tax, it is well advised to have a VAT. Secondly, nonetheless VAT does not always work well in many DTE, principally because some are simply not ready for ‘self-assessment’. Thirdly, what this suggests for tax design is what may be called ‘the NOSFA principle’- No One Size Fits All- although it may be that several ‘sizes’ (patterns) of VAT may prove suitable for different groups of countries in similar circumstances. Fourthly, the major lesson for tax administration that experience in DTE suggests is that oft-cited ‘8-24 months’ needed for successful VAT implementation vastly understates the nature and time scale of the task in many countries. Many DTE cannot be simply, as it were, ‘given’ a good VAT administration: they need to ‘grow’ it themselves and the process may take a long time in some cases. Finally, since tax policy is always about politics as much or more than it is about tax design and administration, we must always remember that, as Ken Messere (1999,p.342) once said in a discussion of OECD countries, tax policy “… is about trade-offs, not truths.” To some extent at least, the future of VAT in DTE lies in much closer understanding of the critical political economy dimension of VAT policy and administration.
（A） VAT Works
VAT works as well as or better than possible alternatives in most countries, whether developed or DTE. Nonetheless, over the last few years, some important questions have been raised with respect to VAT, questions that will no doubt be much further explored in subsequent academic research and that may perhaps eventually come to influence policy to some extent. Three such questions are discussed briefly here: the effects of VAT on revenues, on trade, and on the underground economy.本文来自辣.文~论^文·网原文请找腾讯324'9114
As the background paper shows, VAT is by no means necessarily the ‘money machine’ that it has sometimes been called. The effects on revenue of introducing a VAT in particular contexts remains a matter open to interpretation and question, as recently underlined by some who have questioned the capability of VAT to replace revenues from trade liberalization in some DTE (e.g. Rajaraman, 2004). While it is true that there may indeed be a somewhat stronger case for retaining some taxation on international trade on revenue grounds than has been conventionally asserted, this case rests less on defects of VAT as such than on the assumed relative inefficiency of VAT administration compared to border tax administration. If a VAT can be administered adequately, the conventional conclusion that it offers the best way for a country to make up revenue losses from trade liberalization holds, though perhaps in less sweeping terms than originally argued. Indeed, the equally conventional conclusion that a VAT is the most economically desirable and administratively effective way in which to collect a given share of national income through a general consumption tax also holds—provided, again, that the capacity exists to administer VAT adequately. When a country introduces a VAT, whether to replace another form of general sales tax or as a new tax, there need not necessarily be an aggregate increase in revenues (either from consumption taxes or in general). As a rule, however, the economic cost of collecting revenues will decline, thus making society better off. Similarly, as with any tax, although increasing the rate of an existing VAT rates will neither necessarily increase revenues proportionately nor be costless, it may nonetheless be the economically most sensible way to expand revenue shares in DTE, if that is the policy goal.
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