The EU VAT Treatment of Public Sector Bodies: Slowly Moving in the Wrong Direction

Rita de la Feria ()
Additional contact information
Rita de la Feria: Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation

No 808, Working Papers from Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation

Abstract: In most countries applying a VAT system, the activities and transactions undertaken by public sector bodies are not subject to full taxation. The rationale usually invoked to justify lack of full taxation is of a mixed conceptual and political kind. On one hand, there is a view that the activities of those bodies are hard to tax and that, in practice, it is almost impossible to establish a single VAT treatment applicable to all of them. One the other hand, and more importantly, there is a perception that exclusion of the products supplied by public sector bodies from full taxation, achieves social and distributional aims. The rule under the EU VAT system is that supplies by public sector bodies are non-taxable. In practice, however, the VAT treatment of public sector bodies is extremely complex, giving rise to significant legal problems and economic distortions. The aim of this paper is to consider the current legislative framework, with special consideration being given to recent developments in this area, at both legislative and jurisprudential levels, in an attempt to determine whether they constitute positive progress, or whether together they represent a slow and subtle move towards a further deepening of the system’s already existing flaws.

Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-eec and nep-pbe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Intertax 37(3): 148–165, 2009.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Busine ... Series_08/WP0808.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Business_Taxation/Docs/Publications/Working_Papers/Series_08/WP0808.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Business_Taxation/Docs/Publications/Working_Papers/Series_08/WP0808.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:btx:wpaper:0808

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dongxian Guo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).